



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 Divorcées, Rowan Beaird ( paperback June 2024)
£9.99
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.
Hey Zoey, Sarah Crossan ( PAPERBACK July 2025)
£9.99
A provocative, tender and darkly funny novel that explores the painful truths of modern-day connection, and all the complicated and unexpected forms that love can take in a lifetime.
Imagine discovering an animatronic sex doll hidden in the garage. What would you do?Dolores initially does nothing. She assumes the doll belongs to her husband, David, and their relationship is already strained.
They’re not young, they’re not old; they have no children, they keep up with the markers of being middle class and Dolores is well versed in keeping men’s secrets. But then, Dolores and Zoey start to talk ...What surfaces runs deeper than Dolores could have ever expected, with consequences for all of the relationships in her life, especially her relationship to herself. Hey, Zoey is a propulsive story of love, family, and trauma in our tech-buffered age of alienation, as strange as it is familiar.
'Brilliant, provocative, and darkly funny' Sarah Dunn'Unique, refreshing and revelatory ... Reads the zeitgeist perfectly' Helen Cullen'One of our most inventive writers ... Blends comedy, drama and heartbreak in a novel that is as surprising as it is memorable' John Boyne
Come and Get It, Kiley Reid ( paperback May 2025)
£9.99
Everything comes at a price. But not everything can be paid for…Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She’s slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance.
Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie’s dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors. As the two women form an unlikely relationship, they soon become embroiled in a world of roommate theatrics, vengeful pranks and illicit intrigue – and are forced to question just how much of themselves they are willing to trade to get what they want.
Sharp, intimate and provocative, Come and Get It takes a lens to our money-obsessed society in a tension-filled story about desire, consumption and bad behaviour.
Paperback May 2025
The Life Impossible, Matt Haig ( June 2025)
£9.99
The remarkable new novel from the author of the multimillion-selling international sensation The Midnight Library'A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination' BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH'What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don't understand yet . . .'When retired Maths teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her.
She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the Balearics Grace searches for answers about her friend's life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed.
But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past. Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.
Heart Be At Peace, Donal Ryan ( paperback June 2025)
£9.99
Some things can send a heart spinning; others will crack it in two... In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding.
But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch…Told in twenty-one voices, Heart, be at Peace is a heartfelt, lyrical novel that can be read independently, or as a companion to Donal Ryan’s multi-award-winning novel, The Spinning Heart, voted ‘The Irish Book of the Decade’. *****
Note image of hardback is featured... paperback cover is similiar but not identical!
When the Cranes Fly South, Lisa Rizden ( paperback May 2025)
£14.99
The most moving book of the year about the power of human connection. A book to love, and share. Fredrik Backman.
Bo lives a quiet existence in his small rural village in the north of Sweden.
He is elderly and his days are punctuated by visits from his care team and his son. Fortunately, he still has his rich memories, phone calls with his best friend Ture, and his beloved dog Sixten for company. Only now his son is insisting the dog must be taken away.
The very same son that Bo is wanting to mend his relationship with before his time is up. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotions and makes Bo determined to resist and find his voice. An instant number one bestseller in Sweden and winner of the Swedish Book of the Year, When the Cranes Fly South is a profoundly moving and life-affirming novel about one man?s desire to preserve his autonomy, the multitude of stories contained within a life, and the big things for which we have no words.
Ghost Wedding, David Park ( hardback May 2025)
£16.99
For fans of Sebastian Faulks, Donal Ryan and Anne Tyler comes this beautiful novel following two troubled men, separated by nearly a century, bound by the ghosts of their past.
When George Allenby is put in charge of building a lake in the grounds of an imposing Irish manor house, he intends to do the job as swiftly as possible and return to Belfast. Allenby is still wrestling with his time as an officer during the First World War, burdened by the many things he could have done differently. Almost a century later, Alex and Ellie are preparing for their wedding, sparing no expense to hire a venue overlooking the very lake Allenby built all those years ago.
Like Allenby before him, Alex is haunted by decisions he made in the past. Now, with the wedding drawing ever closer, he is at a crossroads. Telling the truth might free him from his guilt; it might also take away everything he cares about, including Ellie.
In this masterful portrait of love and betrayal, David Park reveals the many ways the past seeps into the present: destructive, formidable, but also hopeful, in the moments of fragile beauty that remain.
The Names, Florence Knapp ( hardback
£16.99
The Names is the story of three names, three versions of a life, and the infinite possibilities that a single decision can spark. 'I've just been blown away by the best debut novel in years . . a genius idea for a book'Sunday Times.
It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends for her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the baby after him.
But when faced with the decision, Cora hesitates. Going against his wishes is a risk that will have consequences, but is it right for her child to inherit his name from generations of domineering men? The choice she makes in this moment will shape the course of their lives. Seven years later, her son is Bear, a name chosen by his sister, and one that will prove as cataclysmic as the storm from which it emerged.
Or he is Julian, the name his mother set her heart on, believing it will enable him to become his own person. Or he is Gordon, named after his father and raised in his cruel image - but is there still a chance to break the mould? Powerfully moving and full of hope, this is the story of three names, three versions of a life, and the infinite possibilities that a single decision can spark. It is the story of one family, and love's endless capacity to endure, no matter what fate has in store.
To Avenge a Dead Glacier, Shane Tivenan ( paperback May 2025)
£13.99
Winner of the RTÉ Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and the John McGahern Award, this debut collection simmers with style, verve, tension and humour. Throughout the stories in To Avenge a Dead Glacier, Tivenan explores the lives of rural Irish outsiders.
His characters are artists, sean-nós singers, members of the queer community, the gifted, the neurodivergent, the environmentally concerned, people with memory problems, the spiritual people, the non-human. In the title story, a man attends the funeral of a glacier in Iceland without fully knowing why he is there. In another, a midlands graffiti artist warns his townspeople through his throw-ups about the dangers of the way they are living, but neglects his own mind in the process.
In 'Honey Brown', a ninety-two-year-old woman who suffers from Charles Bonnet syndrome tries to celebrate her birthday in a nursing home in Roscommon while fighting back the hallucinations brought on by her condition. In 'Resurrection of a Corncrake', a semi-retired plasterer is haunted by the silencing of the birds in his townland, a silencing which he knows he took part in. These are stories rich in the essential detail of human life, in the fraught exchanges that make up our every relationship, and very often of life lived beyond the confines of safety or simplicity.
All Fours, Miranda July ( paperback May 2025)
£9.99
A semi-famous artist turns forty-five and gives herself a gift - a cross-country road trip from LA to New York, without her husband and child. But thirty minutes after setting off, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel - and embarks on the journey of a lifetime.
With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.
Ripeness, Sarah Moss ( hardback May 2025)
£20.00
Moving from 60s Italy to contemporary Ireland, Ripeness is a breathtaking story of love and the search for belonging from Sarah Moss, bestselling author of Summerwater. On the brink of adulthood and just out of school, Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy. She has been sent by her mother with strict instructions: to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will change all of their lives.
Decades later, happily divorced and newly energized, Edith is living in contentment and comfort in Ireland. When her best friend Méabh receives a call from an American man claiming to be her brother, Méabh must decide if she will meet him, and Edith finds herself plunged back into her own past and the story of the baby she once knew and loved. 'Tender and rueful .
. . Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence' - Emma Donoghue'
The Director, Daniel Kehlmann ( hardback May 2025)
£22.00
G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest, perhaps the greatest director of his era: when the Nazis seized power he was filming in France, to escape the horrors of the new Germany he flees to Hollywood. But under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody.
Not even Greta Garbo, who he made famous, can help him. And thus, almost through no fault of his own, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. The returning family is confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime.
But Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Berlin, wants the film genius, he won't take no for an answer and makes big promises. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement. Daniel Kehlmann's novel about art and power, beauty and barbarism is a triumph.
Shanghailanders, Juli Mia ( paperback May 2025)
£10.99
Leo and Eko Yang and their three daughters seems to have it all - wealth, beauty and brains; a privileged life in the world of international Shanghai, Paris and Boston. But as the children become adults and their parents celebrate twenty-five years of marriage, the Yangs are at a crossroads. What bonds still keep them together? What are the foundations of a family?Beginning in the year 2040 and moving backward through the present to 2014, Shanghailanders takes readers into the intimacies and desires of each of the Yangs, as well as the people in their orbit - a nanny from the provinces, a private driver with a penchant for danger, and a grandmother whose memories of the past echo the present.
As we watch this changing family in their changing world, universal constants remain: love is complex and family will always be stubbornly connected by blood, secrets and longing. Along the way, Min shows how a family makes and remakes itself over the years, what unites us and slowly drives us apart.
Longlisted for the 2025 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENECE IN FICTION
Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way, Elaine Feeney
£16.99
Claire O’Connor’s life has been on hold since she broke up with Tom Morton and moved from London back home to the rugged West of Ireland to care for her dying father. But glimpses of her old life are sure to follow when Tom unexpectedly moves nearby.
As Claire is thrown into a love she thought she’d left behind, she questions if Tom has come for her or for himself. Living in her childhood home brings its own challenges. While Claire tries to maintain a normal life – getting lost online, going to work and minding her own business – Tom’s return stirs up haunting memories trapped within the walls of the old family house.
Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way is a story of love and resilience, rich with history and drama, and the legacies of violence and redemption. As the secrets of the past are revealed, Claire must confront whether she can escape her history to make a future for herself. '
Elaine Feeney is one of Irish literature's most gifted and persuasive storytellers' SINÉAD GLEESON
An uncanny understanding of the workings of the human heart. I loved this book' LOUISE KENNEDY
Albion, Anna Hope ( hardback June 2025)
£16.99
The Brooke family are gathering in their eighteenth-century ancestral home – twenty bedrooms of carved Sussex sandstone – to bury Philip: husband, father and the blinding sun around which they have all orbited for as long as they can remember. Frannie, inheritor of a thousand acres of English countryside, has dreams of rewilding and returning the estate to nature: a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe. Milo envisages a treetop haven for the super-rich where, under the influence of psychedelic drugs, a new ruling class will be reborn.
Each believes their father has given them his blessing, setting them on a collision course with each other. Isa has long suspected that her father thought only of himself, and hopes to seek out her childhood love, who still lives on the estate, to discover whether it is her feelings for him that are creating the fault lines in her marriage. And then there is Clara, who arrives in their midst from America, shrouded in secrets and bearing a truth that will fracture all the dreams on which they’ve built their lives.
Superb … Anna Hope engages, head-on, with some of the most urgent and challenging issues facing the world today, and transforms them into spellbinding family drama' Jonathan Coe
Speak to Me Of Home, Jeanne Cummins ( hardback May 2025)
£20.00
Rafaela remembers everything that matters: her beautiful childhood in San Juan, her marriage to Peter, uprooting their children, Ruth and Benny, to the American Midwest, and losing all sense of her place in the world. So she tells no one when her memory begins to slip. Her daughter, in New York with a family of her own, wishes she could forget her muddy feelings about where she comes from - the same feelings which motivated her 22-year-old daughter Daisy to reconnect with their past.
Daisy, who has momentarily forgotten everything, hears the word critical in a hospital room in San Juan and remembers, all at once, the car that hurtled towards her, the terrible storm, and something else. What was it?Now Ruth and Rafaela must return to the city where it all began, to gather by Daisy's bedside and confront the twists of fate that have caused a growing rift in their family and led them to this moment.
'A riveting tale of three generations, this is storytelling at its finest'JOHN BOYNE, author of The Heart's Invisible Furies'
The Racket : On Tour with Tennis’s Golden Generation – and the other 99% by Conor Niland ( paperback june 2025)
£10.99
Conor Niland may only have managed a career-high ranking of 129 – only? that is some achievement in itself! – but The Racket, his account of how he managed this, is up there with the best half-dozen books on tennis ever written.' Geoff Dyer
WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024
When Conor Niland was 16, he was chosen to hit with Serena Williams at Nick Bollettieri's famed tennis academy. Conor, the Irish junior number one, was feeling a bit homesick. Serena, also 16, already owned her own house beside the academy.
Conor Niland knows what it's like when Roger Federer walks into the dressing room ('Ciao, bonjour, hello!'), and he has had the exquisitely terrible experience of facing Novak Djokovic in the world's biggest tennis stadium - while suffering from food poisoning. But he never reached the very top. The Racket is the story of pro tennis's 99%: the players who roam the globe in hope of climbing the rankings and squeaking into the Grand Slam tournaments.
It brings us into a world where a few dozen super-rich players - travelling with coaches and physios - share a stage with lonely touring pros whose earnings barely cover their expenses. Painting a vivid picture of the social dynamics on tour, the economics of the game, and the shadows cast by gambling and doping, The Racket is a witty and revealing underdog's memoir and a unique look inside a fascinating hidden world.
The Echoes, Evie Wyld ( paperback June 2025)
£9.99
Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. This summer, discover the beautiful novel that ‘will stay with you forever’ (Observer).
‘Like all the best ghost stories, The Echoes is also a love story’ PAULA HAWKINS
As a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, Max watches his girlfriend Hannah in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. In the months before Max’s death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story. Yet the past refuses to stay hidden.
Bogboy by Patrick Kealey ( paperback June 2025)
£10.99
Alfie O'Brien, soon to rename himself Bogboy, is born an orphan into a house of dead things, presided over by his imperious, ailing aunt. This is a place where the past won't let the present go, where ghosts confer with the living, and where discovering who you are means coming face to face with some uncomfortable truths. It is a house cursed by shadows, secrets and dynasty.
While the wind blows in from the Atlantic across these Irish peatlands, old enmities bite down, and when Bogboy is left for dead, he must learn how to trust love, discover where he belongs, and reconcile himself with his destiny. The ancestors are gathering and Bogboy is about to become a man. An audacious, rousing story of hope and beauty rising out of the dying embers of a corrupt and redundant regime, Bogboy is a story for our times, reminding us that attention to the natural world offers solace and healing, and that love - wherever we may find it - is always stronger than hatred.
Scaffolding, Lauren Elkin ( paperback June 2025)
£9.99
Scaffolding is like a perfect French movie of a novel…elegant, original and often very funny’ Kevin Barry
Two couples inhabit the same apartment in Paris, almost fifty years apart…2019. When David takes a job in London, Anna is left alone in their Paris apartment. It’s August and the city is deserted but when Clémentine moves into the building, Anna finds herself drawn inextricably into the younger woman’s world…1972.
Florence is finishing her degree in psychology and contemplating pregnancy. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood and both have distractions outside their marriage…As the two couples face the challenges of marriage and fidelity, the characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space.
‘Intelligent, sexy and brilliantly observed’ Stylist‘Atmospheric and evocative’ Observer
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