Welcome
Books Paper Scissors is an independent bookshop in leafy South Belfast, near Botanic Gardens, Queen’s University and the Ulster Museum.
We stock a curated selection of new fiction and non-fiction, plus Irish writing, gift books and poetry. We also have a children's room, with choices from newborn to teenager. If you don't see the book you want , just ask via e-mail or phone, we can source most books in just a few days.
Beyond books we stock greetings cards, high quality stationery, pens from Lamy and other gifts.
Please note, our website inventory is not tracked with our shop stock, but we can always order any title quickly if not in stock.
Latest
The Polite Act of Drowning, Charlotte Hurtubise ( paperback 20 June 2024)
£14.99
The luminous debut novel from one of Ireland's finest storytellers'The Polite Act of Drowning is a beautiful and captivating novel, lyrical and sensuous, a precise and faithful evocation of the tumult and trauma of family life, and of emergence into adulthood, and the confrontation of truths about ourselves and the people we love' - Donal RyanMichigan, 1985. The drowning of a teenage girl causes ripples in the small town of Kettle Lake, though for most the waters settle quickly. For sixteen year old Joanne Kennedy, however, the tragedy dredges up untold secrets and causes her mother to drift farther from reality and her family.When troubled newcomer Lucinda arrives in town, she offers Joanne a chance of real friendship, and together the teenagers push against the boundaries of family, self-image, and their sexuality during the tension of a long, stifling summer. But the undercurrents of past harms continuously threaten to drag Joanne and those around her under...
The Whispers, Ashley Audrain ( paperback from 04 July 2024)
£9.99
The whispers started long before the accident on Harlow Street .
. . Was it at the party, when Whitney screamed blue murder at her son?Or after neighbour Blair started prowling Whitney's house, uninvited?Or once Rebecca and Ben's childlessness finally puts a crack in their marriage?But on the terrible night of the accident, the whispers grow louder, more insistent.
Neighbours gather round. Questions are asked. Secrets are spilled.
And the gloss on everything begins to rub off. Everyone is drawn into the darkness. Because there's no smoke without fire.No friendship without envy.And no lie that does not conceal a devastating truth .
The captivating new novel from the author of the explosive Sunday Times bestseller, THE PUSH'Spellbinding, a shimmering, visceral ride through the dark side of family' LISA JEWELL
North Woods, Daniel Mason (paperback August 2024)
£9.99
North Woods has been heaped with praise and hype, and deservedly so. This is a book that treats life as a miracle and demands the proper awe from its readers' Antonia Senior, The Times 'This is a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic .A SINGLE HOUSE DEEP IN THE WOODS OF NEW ENGLAND. A young Puritan couple on the run. An English soldier with a fantastic vision.
Inseparable twin sisters. A lovelorn painter and a lusty beetle. A desperate mother and her haunted son.
A ruthless con man and a stalking panther. Buried secrets. Madness, dreams and hope.
All are connected. The dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive. Exhilarating, daring and playful, NORTH WOODS will change the way you see the world.
'A monumental achievement . . .
I loved it' Maggie O'Farrell'
Julia, Sandra Newman ( paperback August 2024)
£9.99
London, chief city of Airstrip One, the third most populous province of Oceania. It's 1984 and Julia Worthing works as a mechanic fixing the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Under the ideology of IngSoc and the rule of the Party and its leader Big Brother, Julia is a model citizen - cheerfully cynical, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics.
She knows how to survive in a world of constant surveillance, Thought Police, Newspeak, Doublethink, child spies and the black markets of the prole neighbourhoods. She's very good at staying alive. But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department - a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith, she comes to realise that she's losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.
Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original
Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff ( paperback Sept 2024)
£9.99
A profound and explosive novel about a spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive. A servant girl escapes from a settlement. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief of everything that her own civilization has taught her.
The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how -and if - we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.
Pre-Order Paperback from September 2024.
Leaving, Roxana Robinson ( paperback Oct 2024)
£9.99
What does love demand of us, and who must pay the price?High school sweethearts, Sarah and Warren, have grand plans for an adventurous future together, but when a misunderstanding causes them to part ways, they end up marrying other people. When they meet again at sixty, their lives have been carved into very different shapes. Sarah lives outside New York; Warren lives in Boston.Sarah is divorced, Warren still married, and both have grown up children. When they reconnect, they feel the rekindled spark of love and desire - a spark that has been dead for so long. But are they willing to risk destroying all that they have built separately for the chance of a future together?
Table For Two, Amor Towles ( hardback May 2024)
£18.99
Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’s novel Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana.
But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows, and dive bars of Los Angeles. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting fiction.
The Divorcées, Rowan Beaird ( hardback May 2024)
£16.99
Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage.
In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce - except in Reno, Nevada. At the Golden Yarrow, the most respectable of Reno's 'divorce ranches' Lois finds herself living with half a dozen other would-be divorcees, all in Reno for the six weeks' residency that is the state's only divorce requirement. They spend their days riding horses and their nights flirting with cowboys, and it's as wild and fun as Lake Forest, Illinois, was prim and stifling.
But it isn't until Greer Lange arrives that Lois's world truly cracks open . . .
Gorgeous, beguiling, and completely indifferent to societal convention, Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met - and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her. But how much can she really trust her mysterious new friend? And how far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?Set in the glamorous, dizzying world of 1950s Reno, THE DIVORCEES is a deliciously slow-burn, atmospheric page-turner and a dazzling exploration of female friendship, desire, and freedom.
'I straight up loved it. It's so stylish, so elegant, each sentence a delectable little treat . .
. and the nods towards darkness and things unravelling are so thrilling and chicly done'Elizabeth Macneal, bestselling author of The Doll Factory'Excellent, deeply compelling'Lauren Groff, bestselling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies'A delicious literary page-turner from a fierce new voice'Rebecca Makkai, bestselling author of The Great Believers'I adored The Divorcees - such an atmospheric and layered story of female independence, solidarity and deception'Julie Mae Cohen
The Safe Keep, Yael Van Der Wouden ( hardback May 2024)
£16.99
Now Booker Longlisted 2024!
It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline.
But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season... Eva is Isabel's antithesis: sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn't. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house-a spoon, a knife, a bowl-Isabel' suspicions spiral out of control.
In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel's paranoia gives way to desire - leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva - nor the house in which they live - are what they seem. 'Surprising, chilling, and electric' Alice Winn, bestselling author of IN MEMORIAM'The Safekeep is a dream of a novel — mesmerizing and shockingly good...
I was utterly blown away' Miranda Cowley Heller, bestselling author of THE PAPER PALACE 'An impressive debut; I already look forward to Van der Wouden’s next' Guardian
The Heart in Winter, Kevin Barry ( hardback June 2024)
£16.99
What if we ride out tonight?What if we ride out and never once look back?October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains.
The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.
A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast .
AN IRISH TIMES FICTION TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2024
Super Sunny Murder Club, Summer edition ( paperback, June 2024)
£8.99
A collection of sizzling summer-themed crime and mystery stories by thirteen of the most popular and exciting children’s book authors! Co-edited by Serena Patel, the award-winning author of the Anisha: Accidental Detective series and by Robin Stevens, author of the bestselling Murder Most Unladylike series. This gorgeous summery collection brings back together thirteen bestselling, award-winning and exciting authors: Abiola Bello, Annabelle Sami, Benjamin Dean, E.L. Norry, Elle McNicoll, Dominique Valente, Maisie Chan, Nizrana Farook, Patrice Lawrence, Robin Stevens, Roopa Farooki, Serena Patel and Sharna Jackson.
With stunning illustrations by Harry Woodgate. Grab your sunnies and your magnifying glass, and join the Murder Club for more sensational short stories as they lead you on a journey of foul play and murderously magnificent mysteries! Including sun-thieves, fantastical creatures of the deep, airport mayhem, weddings gone wrong, tropical resort travesties, and a very sticky situation at a berry picking farm. This is the prefectly entertaining collection to pack in every young reader’s summer holiday bag.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith ( paperback May 2024)
£10.99
In her long-awaited debut memoir, award-winning poet Maggie Smith explores in lyrical vignettes the end of her marriage and the beginning of a surprising new life. It is a story about a mother's fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman's love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility.
Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.
" This is quite a remarkable, refreshing and powerful book to empower and console - highly recommended" - Linda
Lola in Belfast, Pallavi Padma-Uday ( hardback, May 2024)
£10.00
The second collection, again as beautifully produced as before, from Belfast based and Indian born Pallavi Padma- Uday.
With a foreword by Nandi Jola.
Pallavi's poems touch on both cultures, and the absolute universalities of life as a woman, of illness, and love, and home.
The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley ( hardback May 2024)
£16.99
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'.
With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?
'I loved its combination of extreme whimsy, high seriousness and cool understatement' THE TIMES
The Vanishing Elephant, Charles Way and Sabine Dargent
£9.99
In the heart of Bengal, a young boy named Opu dreams of becoming an elephant trainer. When he befriends Janu, an Asian elephant, their friendship is a first step on an adventure so huge, it spans decades and continents. On their separate paths, they face fearsome encounters, stormy seas and strange new worlds.
It works as a great story to read aloud to younger children and to share with older children, the layout and shape of the book is great for shared reading.
This moving story of friendship and belonging from award winning theatre company Cahoots was named Critic's Pick by the New York Times. The live show is coming to Belfast for one week only this Autumn! Don't miss it - book via the Grand Opera House Belfast, at www.goh.co.uk.
Sandwich, Catherine Newman ( hardback June 2024)
£16.99
One week in Cape Cod. The perfect family holiday. What could possibly go wrong...?For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod.
Their rustic beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, its quirky furniture and mismatched pots and pans greeted like old friends. Now, sandwiched between her children who are adult enough to be fun but still young enough to need her, and her parents who are alive and healthy, Rocky wants to preserve this golden moment forever. This one precious week when everything is in balance; everything is in flux.
But every family has its secrets and hers is no exception. With her body in open revolt and surprises invading her peaceful haven, the perfectly balanced seesaw of Rocky’s life is tipping towards change…
Sprout & Co Saladology : Fresh Ideas for Delicious Salads ( May 2024, hardback)
£22.00
Thrilled to learn that the idea for Sprout and Co. and consequently this inspiring book, was born during a eureka moment when Jack first tasted a freshly picked, super-ripe tomato from the gardens at Ballymaloe Cookery School.' Darina Allen, Ballymaloe Cookery School Jack and Theo Kirwan, co-founders of acclaimed Dublin-based restaurants, Sprout, are devoted to showing just how full flavoured a salad can be. Their first cookbook, Saladology, includes more than 100 exciting recipes, ranging from simple side salads, attention-grabbing vegetables, satisfying noodles, pasta, fish and meat dishes.
It's a collection of ideas inspired by their favourite food experiences, reimagining what a salad can be - and always with an emphasis on delicious. Recipes include:- Ratatouille con tomate- Gochujang bowl- Roast chicken winter panzanella- Harissa sweet potato & herb-split yogurt- Olive oil-braised fennel with chorizo & halloumi honey- Scallops with salsa roja & burnt corn.
Family Lore, Elizabeth Acevedo ( paperback July 2024)
£9.99
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides to throw her own living wake, her sisters are concerned. What has she foreseen?Planning the celebration brings further complications for the Marte family, because Flor isn't the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too.
And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own. Family Lore traces the intertwining stories of five women: sisters and cousins, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, to ask the ultimate question - what does it take to live a good life, for yourself and those you love?
If you like the sound of this, try also The Measure, Nikki Erlick.
Book Club
The BPS Book Club meets in the last full week of every month. We have two sessions, each one covering the same book so just pick the session that suits you. It's a relaxed and unintimidating sharing of views and opinions.
Tuesday morning 9.30-10.30, or
Thursday evening 7 - 8 pm.
Please contact us if would like to be added to our book-club mailing list.
Please note it fills up quickly ( I take a maximum of 15 per session) so you can only book in response to the email invite each month, on a first come first served basis.
BOOKS as GIFTS
Perhaps you have a relative or friend who loves reading but you have no idea what to choose?
We offer a monthly subscription gift service where the book(s) are chosen and dispatched by Books Paper Scissors with a gift message from the giver.
The recipient will receive an introductory questionnaire and voucher, with SAE to return, allowing them to select genres and identify preferences - we do the rest!
For children or adults, 2024 prices:
Hardback Subscription £25 per month.
Paperback Subscription £15 per month.
Children's Books £12 per month.
No minimum or maximum length of time. Includes all postage.
Please enquire if you would like more details, or order online by searching ' gift subscription'.
Our Book Store
15 Stranmillis Rd, Belfast BT9 5AF
Phone: 028 9066 7815
Monday - Saturday- 10.00 - 17:00
