Chapters Bookstore Dublin

I had the weekend off and, naturally, forgot to tell you something important. We sell Tonies. So. Let us discuss. Why is a bookshop selling Tonies? Excellent question, imaginary stern customer in my head. Because stories are stories. Because listening to a story being read aloud is one of the great childhood pleasures. Because before most children can read independently, they are already building language, attention, imagination, rhythm, vocabulary & a sense of how stories work by listening. Because being read to matters. And because, with the very best will in the world, no parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or exhausted guardian can read the same story 999 times in a row without beginning to see the wallpaper move. Tonies are not replacing books. Calm yourselves. We remain extremely pro-book. But Tonies give children another way into stories. A screen-free way. No tablet. No phone. No tiny person being sucked into seven hours of bright plastic chaos while you try to make toast. They listen. They imagine. They choose. They press play. They develop a little bit of independence around story time, which is gorgeous & occasionally means an adult gets to drink half a cup of tea while it is still technically warm. And honestly, many of us use audiobooks all the time. In the car. On walks. While folding laundry. While pretending we are going to clean the house but actually just standing in the kitchen listening to a chapter. Children’s audio stories are the same idea, only softer, sturdier and with more farm animals. So yes, we sell books. We also sell stories children can hold, choose & listen to without a screen. Moo responsibly!

Well. I posted a giveaway to Facebook and forgot to hit the very obvious button that also shares it to Instagram, because apparently I am a professional. So Instagram, here you go: a Paperblanks Fourth Wing notebook, complete with dramatic dragon energy, beautiful lined pages and a little pocket at the back for storing secrets, receipts, tiny prophecies or the list of people who have wronged you in book clubs. We are sending this out to one lucky fanatic. Sorry, reader. To enter: Like/follow Chapters Comment below and tell us what you are reading That’s it. No riddles. No trials. No need to bond with a dragon, though obviously it wouldn’t hurt. We’ll pull a random name from the proverbial hat at 9am on Wednesday, and the notebook will go out in the post that day. May the odds be ever in your emotionally over-invested favour. #FourthWing #Paperblanks #BookishGiveaway #ReaderLife #BookstagramIreland #BookishNotebook #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop

Our first Rioja tasting night happened and frankly, we may now be insufferable. There was bubbles. There was Rioja. There was chocolate. There was cheese. There was table hopping, glass raising, note comparing and just enough sophistication in the room for everyone to pretend we absolutely knew what we were doing. “Ah yes, I’m getting red fruit, spice, oak and the faint emotional memory of a Spanish holiday I never went on.” Perfect. No notes. And then, wonderfully, people left with bottles. Not one bottle. Two bottles. Sensible bottles. Considered bottles. Bottles chosen with care, taste and impressive restraint. We were honestly amazed by the level of responsible purchasing. Give me half a glass of anything with fizz and I am not allowed in the same room as an online shop, a “limited edition” button or a late-night basket containing earrings, garden furniture and a book about medieval poisons. But our wine tasters? Calm. Elegant. Decisive. Mature... alarming, really! Bookshop by day, highly sophisticated wine salon by night. Well. Sophisticated-adjacent. Can it get better? Probably not. Should we do it again? Absolutely. @rc_chocncheese #ChaptersBookstore #DublinEvents #WineTasting #Rioja #BooksAndWine #BookshopEvents #DublinBookshop #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #IndependentBookshop #WineNight

Author visit alert with proper walking boots energy! The lovely Miriam Mulcahy has been in Chapters with Walking to the Foot of the Sky, her beautiful new book about setting out on the Beara Breifne Way and finding far more than a long walk through Ireland. This is landscape, memory, history, myth, endurance and renewal, all moving at the pace of a person who has decided that maybe the only way through life is, inconveniently, through life - a book I think I should read, as I love walking and need to stop running to the Land of Denial. For anyone who loves Irish writing, reflective travel, wild roads, old stories, new beginnings and books that make you briefly consider buying hiking socks. #WalkingToTheFootOfTheSky #MiriamMulcahy #EriuBooks #IrishWriting #IrishNonFiction #TravelWriting #Memoir #BearaBreifneWay #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop

For anyone currently resisting the urge to run away in a campervan: we have news... Susan Bennett has been in Chapters signing One Year, her beautiful, life-affirming memoir about doing the thing sensible people tell you not to do: packing up your life, getting into a campervan called Hans and driving across Europe in search of air, space, courage and a way back to joy. Seventeen countries. One van. One huge reminder that sometimes stopping is not giving up. Sometimes stopping is how you start again. This is for anyone who has ever looked at their life and thought: surely there has to be another way to do this? Warm, honest, hopeful and full of big skies. Copies available now at Chapters. #OneYear #SusanBennett #GillBooks #Memoir #IrishWriting #TravelMemoir #SignedCopies #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop

New Irish Gothic alert and it is absolutely not here to behave! Chloe Michelle Howarth, author of the gorgeous, sun-struck Sunburn, is back with Heap Earth Upon It, and this time we are in darker, colder, stranger territory. January 1965. The orphaned O’Leary siblings arrive in the village of Ballycrea hoping for a fresh start. Obviously, because this is Irish rural Gothic and not a Bord Fáilte brochure, things become intense, suspicious and emotionally disastrous. There are secrets. There is obsession. There are claustrophobic relationships, tangled identities and the strong sense that everyone should perhaps have gone for a brisk walk and talked honestly, but instead chose repression. For readers who like their fiction atmospheric, queer, gothic, rain-soaked and quietly feral. Signed copies of both Heap Earth Upon It and Sunburn available now! @chloemichelleh @verve_books #HeapEarthUponIt #ChloeMichelleHowarth #Sunburn #VerveBooks #IrishFiction #IrishGothic #QueerFiction #SapphicFiction #BookstagramIreland #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop

VERY EXCITED!! Andrea Mara was in signing Such a Nice Girl, which is exactly the kind of title that sounds reassuring until you remember it is Andrea Mara and therefore someone is absolutely lying, missing or about to make a terrible decision in a very expensive kitchen. The set-up is pure nightmare fuel: two mothers, two adult daughters, one glamorous wedding, and a morning-after discovery that turns celebration into full parental panic. What happened between the girls? Who knows more than they are saying? And how well do you really know your own child when something awful may have happened? Andrea is brilliant at taking the polished world of nice houses, nice families and nice girls, then gently pressing on the wallpaper until the whole room starts to come apart. Signed copies are instore & online now while they last! For readers who like domestic thrillers, missing daughters, terrible secrets, suspicious privilege and the deeply comforting knowledge that other people’s families are also an absolute liability. #SuchANiceGirl #AndreaMara #SignedCopies #IrishCrimeFiction #IrishThriller #PsychologicalThriller #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop #BookstagramIreland

Signed copies alert and this one comes with geopolitics, exile and the strong sense that history is absolutely not behaving itself. Jason Corcoran was in signing copies of Leaving Russia: How Putin Forced a Nation’s Future to Flee, his urgent new book about the Russians who left after the invasion of Ukraine and what it means to lose not only a home but also a version of your country you thought still existed. Corcoran writes from the inside: as a journalist and Russia analyst who lived in Moscow for years and as someone who also had to leave. The book follows people caught in the great unravelling: dissidents, artists, business figures, oligarchs and ordinary families trying to work out what survival, conscience and belonging look like when the ground gives way beneath them. So no, not exactly a “light beach read”, unless your beach holiday includes a little authoritarian dread between the factor 50 and the Aperol Spritz. But it is gripping, timely and horribly relevant. The sort of book you pick up “just to have a look” and then find yourself standing in the aisle, half an hour later, muttering, "Well… that’s not good.” Signed copies are in store now while they last! For readers of politics, current affairs, Russia, journalism, exile, war reporting and books that make you feel more informed but slightly less relaxed. #LeavingRussia #JasonCorcoran #SignedCopies #CurrentAffairsBooks #PoliticsBooks #Russia #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop #IrishBookshop #NonFictionBooks

Author visit alert and a very elegant one at that! The wonderful Kathleen MacMahon was in yesterday signing copies of her latest novel, Other People’s Lives, and this is exactly the kind of grown-up, beautifully observed fiction we love putting into people’s hands. Kathleen has serious literary heritage, but she is most definitely her own writer. She is a former RTÉ journalist, an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, and yes, the granddaughter of the great Irish short story writer Mary Lavin. But heritage is not a shortcut. It does not write the sentences for you. What it can do, perhaps, is place you inside a long conversation about stories, attention, women’s lives and the quiet drama of ordinary choices. Kathleen stands firmly on her own feet in that conversation, with a voice that is elegant, observant, emotionally intelligent and entirely hers. Other People’s Lives is about friendship, marriage, motherhood, family, the choices we make when we are young and the way those choices keep tapping us politely on the shoulder twenty-five years later saying, “Remember me?” It follows Justine and Iseult, best friends since school, now approaching fifty and looking back at the lives, loves and marriages they thought they understood. Then Justine’s daughter announces her engagement, and suddenly all those old certainties start to wobble. Warm, sharp, tender, funny and painfully recognisable in places. Basically, ideal for anyone who enjoys fiction about complicated women, complicated families and the terrifying realisation that other people’s lives are never as simple as they look from the outside. SIGNED copies available now. @kathleenmacmahonauthor @penguinbooksireland #OtherPeoplesLives #KathleenMacMahon #PenguinSandycove #PenguinBooksIreland #IrishFiction #IrishWriters #MaryLavin #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop #NewIrishWriting #LiteraryFiction

Author sighting by the window! The brilliant Séamas O’Reilly was in Chapters today with his debut novel Prestige Drama, which is exactly the sort of book we love: funny, sharp, humane, very clever and carrying an emotional payload it has absolutely no intention of warning you about in advance. Set in Derry, the novel begins with the arrival of a Hollywood actor who has come to star in a glossy TV drama about the Troubles. Then she goes missing. Obviously. Because what else should happen when television, trauma, memory, local gossip and the international entertainment industry all decide to stand in the same room together? Séamas, already beloved for the memoir, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, brings all his wit, tenderness and lethal observational skills to fiction, and the result is a novel about who gets to tell a story, who gets left inside it, and what happens when a city’s past becomes content. Come for the prestige. Stay for the drama. Signed copies available now! When they are gone they are gone! @seamasoreilly1 @fleetreads @littlebrownbookgroup_uk #PrestigeDrama #SéamasOReilly #DidYeHearMammyDied #IrishFiction #DerryWriting #NewIrishWriting #FleetBooks #ChaptersBookstore #BookshopOfTheYear2025 #DublinBookshop

Today the 2026 TAP Mentor Reading Club Graduation took place at @chaptersbookstore 🎓📚 Our graduation ceremonies usually take place in @trinitycollegedublin but today students got to graduate surrounded by books in the An Post bookshop of the year @irishbookawards Massive thank you to all at Chapters Bookstore for hosting us & to @kidsbooksirel for their continued support in making this programme happen. 36 6th class students from Drimnagh Castle Primary @cbs_drimnaghcastle and Scoil Mhuire in Blakestown, along with their TY mentors from Drimnagh Castle Secondary @drimnaghcastlecbs and @blakestowncs Blakestown Community School attended the day! This mentor programme aims to bring local TY students into their local primary schools to use reading, books and literacy to support 6th class students as they get ready for the transition to secondary school. Today students worked with their mentors and had a mini graduation ceremony, got a tour of the shop, all got goody bags and a took part in a brilliant "how to choose your book" workshop with Dr Becky Long from Children's Books Ireland. 📚Every student got to take home at least one book! To quote Chapters Bookshop themselves: "A bookshop should not just be a place where books are sold. It should be a place where readers are made, encouraged, welcomed and occasionally let loose with a discount." Congratulations to all the amazing students and mentors, and thank you to all who help to make this happen!

Signed copies alert, and possibly a public service announcement for every parent who has ever Googled “why is my baby awake?” at 3.17am while questioning every life choice that led them to this moment. The lovely Kelly Geoghegan was in Chapters with her new book Sleep Baby Sleep, a practical, reassuring guide for parents trying to navigate naps, night waking, routines, feeds, regressions and the general first-year baby chaos. Kelly is the founder of Sleepy Stars and has spent years helping families find calmer days and better nights, which frankly sounds like wizardry, but with more feeding schedules. This one is for exhausted parents, hopeful grandparents, gift-buyers, baby-shower attendees and anyone who wants to give the present of sleep, which may actually be the most romantic gift of all. Copies available now at Chapters. @sleepystarsireland @gillbooks