Duckworth Books

06/09/2024

🔥Joanna Scutts event at Collected Books in Durham📚

📖Join us for what promises to be a fascinating, lively, and fierce evening of conversation with literary critic and feminist historian Joanna Scutts on her new book Firebrands: 25 Pioneering Women Writers to Ignite Your Reading Life. Tickets available on the website!

🗓️Thursday 26th of September
⏰7pm
📍Collected Books, DH1 4SL

04/09/2024

Writing Historical Fiction Panel at Books on the Rise 📚💕

Join Dr Russell Schechter as he discusses writing historical fiction with panel of writers Anna Abney, Louise Fein and Ezra Harker Shaw...

🗓️Wednesday October 9th
⏰7-8pm
📍Books on the Rise, Richmond

30/08/2024

📣NEW MEASHAM HALL BOOK OUT OCT 10📣

Return to Measham Hall with the third book in this brilliant historical fiction series👏👏👏

📖The Prisoner of Measham Hall starts in 1690. England is in crisis – the new protestant King William III has embarked on wars in France and Ireland, inflation is rampant and the price of corn is causing riots.

You can pre-order your copy now! 🙌

29/08/2024

💙Modern-day matriarchs💙

The Conversation💬

You can listen to Poet Helen Knott from Canada and playwright Tanika Gupta from the UK on matriarchs in their culture, strong women in their families and the impact of their mothers' deaths on the BBC World Service🎧

Such a poignant and beautiful discussion definitely worth a listen 🙌

25/08/2024

25/08/2024

Thank you to for organising such a fabulous event last night with Priscilla Morris and Leo Vardiashvili where they both discussed their debut novels 👏📣

📖Black Butterflies: SAREJEVO. SPRING 1992.
Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.

When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

📖Hard by a Great Forest: In a journey that will lead him to the very heart of a conflict that has marred generations and fractured his own family, Saba must retrace his father’s footsteps to discover what remains of their homeland and its people. By turns savage and tender, compassionate and harrowing, Hard by a Great Forest is a powerful and ultimately hopeful novel about the individual and collective trauma of war, and the indomitable spirit of a people determined not only to survive, but to remember those who did not.

21/08/2024

We are delighted to announce that will be speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 8th 🥳🎤

Women at the Heart of the Century 💚💚💚

1949 saw the publication of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second S*x, while the fiercely independent Paget twins transfixed London with their friends and lovers, including Camus and Sartre. Ariane Bankes, Kate Kirkpatrick and Laura Thompson chart the overlapping lives of these women who defied convention. Chaired by Rebecca Jones. 

Tickets go on sale 5 September 🎟️

14/08/2024

We are delighted to announce that will be speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 8th 🥳💚🥳

📖Women at the Heart of the Century📖

1949 saw the publication of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second S*x, while the fiercely independent Paget twins transfixed London with their friends and lovers, including Camus and Sartre. Ariane Bankes, Kate Kirkpatrick and Laura Thompson chart the overlapping lives of these women who defied convention. Chaired by Rebecca Jones. 

🎟️🎟️🎟️Tickets go on sale 5 September

12/08/2024

To our lovely Duckworth followers... we have some exciting news 🤗🤗

We have 2 hardcopy copies of River East, River West (Signed!!!) that we will be giving away this week. The hardcopy is no longer available in most places as now the paperback is out (with a stunning Women's Prize sticker front and center) so these are a rare commodity !

As a thanks for all the support surrounding River East, River West we will choose two lucky people to receive these rare signed hardback copies 🥳🥳🥳

All you have to do is:
💬 Comment
✅ Like
😎 Share on your story
🔎 Follow us

08/08/2024

Hi everybody! We are so happy to announce that Paul Cooper (Fall of Civilizations) and Ariane Bankes (The Quality of Love) will both be attending Wigtown Book Festival this year to talk about their books🎊🥳📚

If you will be attending you can catch Paul Cooper:
🗓️29th of September
⏰12 pm

And Ariane Bankes on:
🗓️October 2nd
⏰4:30pm

Hope to see you there 🥳🥳

06/08/2024

Good morning crime lovers🔪👀

We are on the hunt for three crime-loving book bloggers to review Dead Behind the Eyes✍️

📖Dead Behind the Eyes is the next in a thrilling new crime series from The Times-bestselling author of Death and Croissants

A decapitated body washes up on the banks of the River Loire, in the ancient city centre of Tours🇫🇷

With no-one else available, a reluctant Lombard is brought in to lead the investigation, as the victim - friendless and unclaimed - is given more attention in death than in life.

Leave a comment below if you want to be considered for a proof copy! 💬⬇️

05/08/2024

Took a little waddle over to The Rye Bookshop () this weekend and found some of our books 🦆🦆🦆

Did anyone else do some bookshop wandering this weekend? 📚🫶

02/08/2024

🐚Happy Friday Afternoon Everybody🐚

Saw River East, River West in this gorgeous display window at Round Table books last week and had to share it with you all. The matching ribbon + book cover combo was irresistible! ❤️💛🧡

We would love to know what is on your TBR for the weekend…

Anyways have a quack-ing weekend, I am waddling off to the seaside ciao ciao 🦆🦆🦆🏖️🏖️🏖️

01/08/2024

📣BIG NEWS📣

We are delighted to announce that September Publishing will become an imprint of Duckworth Books 🦆❤️

September has such an incredible list which focuses on upmarket mind-body-spirit publishing as well as a wider range of illustrated and narrative non-fiction. It will make the perfect fit into our quack-ing bookish family 🫶

So glad we can now share this fabulous news with you all🥳

29/07/2024

What a lovely day London is having, the sun is out and so are our books… 📚🦆☀️

The London Irish Centre is hosting a book club tomorrow with Carmel McMahon. She will be discussing her incredibly poignant memoir, In Ordinary Time.

Candid yet lyrical, In Ordinary Time mines the ways that trauma reverberates through time and through individual lives, drawing connections to the events and rhythms of Ireland's long Celtic, early Christian and Catholic history.

It will be online tomorrow at 7pm, you can contact the London Irish Centre for more info ⏰🇮🇪

29/07/2024

📣CALLING ALL ANCIENT HISTORY LOVERS📣

We have some exciting news for you. Our brilliant author Paul Cooper has featured as a guest on The Ancients podcast discussing all things Mayan

You can catch the episode on your favourite podcast listening app🎧

Explore this historic, yet mysterious Maya Collapse and delve into the trader networks, water systems, climate change, agricultural failure and civil unrest that made it possible.

26/07/2024

Helen Knott wrote this beautiful piece in the Irish Independent ✍️🇮🇪

‘“Oldest daughters are some of the toughest men you’ll ever meet” - When I first read that quote. On a random Instagram post, I laughed in the sound of eldest daughter’ 💬

In this piece Helen explores the burdens that can come with being the eldest daughter. This piece is for all the eldest daughters out there who take on so many emotional and caregiver responsibilities within the family unit 💙💙

25/07/2024

🥳Happy Publication Day 🥳

First half of publication day done and dusted ✅

We only have Helen over in London for a few days so we are making the most of her time here📚🇬🇧

This morning she was interviewed by the brilliant Pupak at Battersea Bookshop and signed books 🎙️✍️

Then we went to Round Table Books where we got so many lovely responses about Becoming a Matriarch (thank you Nicoya !) 💙

Then a pit stop at the Duckworth office to sign some special copies 👀 keep an eye out everyone 🦆🦆

And we have one more stop of the day, here we come 😍

24/07/2024

🔥FIREBRANDS EVENT NEWS🔥

This one is for all our quack-tasctic Liverpudlians 🦆

The Reader is welcoming Joanna Scutts (Hotbed, The Extra Woman) to The Reader Bookshop for an evening to talk about her brand-new book: Firebrands.  

In twenty-five witty and vibrant biographical essays, Scutts introduces us to twenty-five brilliant and complex women writers.  

From Murasaki Shikibu, the Japanese author of one of the world’s earliest novels, to Christine de Pizan, a poet in the royal court of medieval France, and Harriet Jacobs, who drew the world’s attention to the horrors of slavery through her own experience. Brilliantly researched and fiercely uncompromising, Firebrands is a reminder to all of us to question what – and who – is considered part of the canon. 

🗓️Date: 27th of September
⏰Time: 6pm
📍Venue: Reader Shop

24/07/2024

Brilliant talk at the Feminist Library yesterday with Helen Knott and Tamarin Norwood 🎙️💙

They each discussed their very personal books with a beautiful openness. Talking about grief and loss is often taboo, and is not an easy task, but they both discuss these topics with such elegance and clarity we could not recommend these books enough! We will be uploading the full talk soon on to our pages but for now here is a brief intro into both of these books:

📖Becoming a Matriarch: All her life, Helen Knott has been surrounded by strong women. She has looked to the women in her family and the larger Indigenous community for guidance, absorbed their stories and admired their independence. But Helen’s path hasn’t been easy and when her mother and grandmother died within six months of each other, she drew upon lessons from her ancestors and the land to discover her inner power and refashion her future.

📖The Song of the Whole Wide World: A few months into pregnancy, Tamarin Norwood learned that the baby she was carrying would not live. Over the sleepless weeks that followed, Tamarin, her husband and their three-year-old son tried to navigate the unfamiliar waters of anticipatory sorrow and to prepare for what was to come.

22/07/2024

☀️WINNERS OF THE SUMMER GIVEAWAY ANNOUNCEMENT☀️

Can we please get a drum roll for…. 🥁🥁🥁






They all have fantastic bookish pages so go check them out!!! 📚📚📚

Thank you to everyone who entered and for sharing the Duckworth love… we will be having lots more fun things coming for you soon so keep an eye out👀💖

22/07/2024

Happy Monday morning everyone!!! 🤗🤗

We hope you are all doing well today. To perk everyone’s spirits we thought it would be great to let you all know that Queen’s Park Books and West End Lane Books are selling signed and dedicated copies of Becoming a Matriarch📚✍️

Becoming a Matriarch is a beautiful exploration of womanhood, loss, grief, all brought together with such wisdom and incredibly lyrical writing💙💙💙

“When winter came, an invisible thickness settled on top of my reality. It swallowed sound, muffled voices, and dulled colours. I drifted from conversations, pushing away from the shores of the living and into oceans of nothing.”

18/07/2024

Hello to our Duck-worthy followers 🦆👋🏽 Exciting summer giveaway below⬇️🌞

We are DYING to know what is on your summer TBR list ??? 👀👀👀

If you need some inspo we have got you covered!

Do you want a historical fiction book set in Restoration England? Then the Master of Measham Hall is for you (perfect time to start reading it before the 3rd book in the series comes out in the autumn 😉)

Or are you looking for your next brilliant non-fiction read? Black Girl From Pyongyang follows the incredible life story of Monica Macias growing up in North Korea

Or perhaps you are wanting to get your teeth into a beautifully written literary fiction book? Black Butterflies is the perfect fit !

Orrrrrrrr are you in the mood for a crime mystery set in the Welsh borders? Eliza Mace will have you covered !!!

Comment below which book you want to add to your TBR, and we will be choosing a lucky person to gift it to 🩷😍

Make sure to :
💬Comment below
❤️Like the post
➡️Share on your story

11/07/2024

Thank you Inkcap Journal for choosing Understorey by as your book of the month🌱🌱📖

‘Weeds are an almost omnipresent part of nature, found in cities and countryside alike, yet they account for some of the most overlooked and undervalued of plants.

What would it mean to notice and appreciate them fully? And what would the effect be over an entire year of looking?’

03/07/2024

An event you won’t want to miss📖📚

Our brilliant author Helen Knott will be flying all the way from the West Coast of Canada to promote her book Becoming a Matriarch 🇨🇦✈️🇬🇧

To celebrate we have lots of things lined up!

We are really looking forward to this event at the Feminist Library with Tamarin Norwood author of The Song of the Whole Wide World. Both authors discuss grief and motherhood in such a poignant way 💙

Please join us on Tuesday, 23 July to discuss both of these brilliant books. There will be a chance for you to ask questions, get signed copies of the books and of course share a drink with the authors and audience🥂

🗓️23rd July
⏰7pm
📌The Feminist Library, London, SE15 6JL

01/07/2024

27/06/2024

A fantastic event yesterday at Camden Garden Center with 🪴👏

Thank you for a fantastic inaugural bookish event. It was the perfect setting to discuss the power of nature and weeds and the importance of paying attention to our natural world👏🌻🌱

and made for a perfect pairing as they discussed their books 📚💚

📖Wild City: City-dwellers, it's time to meet your neighbours. In Wild City Florence Wilkinson takes us on a fascinating journey into why we should engage with our fellow urban species, from the badgers of central Brighton, to tunnel-dwelling Black Country bats to the mosquitoes found on the London Underground and nowhere else on earth.

📖Understorey: In Understorey, artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker records in prose and stunning original line drawings a year spent looking closely at weeds, our most ubiquitous and accessible plants. In gardens, on verges or clustered around municipal lampposts, weeds offer a year-round spectacle of wildlife. The benefits to us of being among greenery are well known, but what exactly are these vaguely familiar shapes that accompany our every step, yet pass beneath our notice? How and when do they emerge, bloom and subside, and what would it mean to notice them?

25/06/2024

Thanks RF Kuang for including River East, River West in your summer reading list for the ☀️☀️

'Portrays western expats in Shanghai with both clear-eyed critique and compassion'

What is on your reading list for Summer 2024? 🍉⛱️📖