Daunt Books Summertown

The shop’s in full swing, and the ginkgo tree is in full ‘spring’! 🌸🍃☀️ We think they make a great pair on Summertown’s high street!

ℹ️All you need to know about our May events! 📍Where? Daunt Books Summertown, OX2 7HN ⏰When? 7-8pm 💷How much? Tickets are £7 including a glass of wine or soft drink. 🎟️How can I book? You can book online at dauntbooks.co.uk, or in the shop. 📚 Tuesday 5th May - Dan Hicks joins us with Paula Akpan to discuss his new book Every Monument Will Fall, in which he traces the origins of contemporary conflicts over art, heritage, memory, and colonialism. 📚 Wednesday 13th May - Nicholas Shakespeare will be in conversation with Abir Mukherjee on Frame 37. Shakespeare’s new novel features John Dyer, the same protagonist as Summertown favourite The Sandpit. 📚 Monday 18th May - Tim Wigmore and Tom de Freston talk about Tim’s book Test Cricket: A History, the Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year for 2025, to celebrate its paperback release. 📚Thursday 28th May - Sarah Gilmartin joins us to discuss her new novel Little Vanities, a novel about the dangerous thrill of stepping outside the roles we’ve been given. She’ll be in conversation with fellow author Kate Collins. 🌟You can find out more about all of our events, the authors and the books themselves by heading to the events page on our website. We look forward to seeing you all there!🌟

🌟Introducing our Daunt Summertown Day Festival 2026 line-up!! We are thrilled to share with you all of the wonderful authors and speakers who will be joining us for take two of our day festival.🌟 🗓️Save the date: join us on Saturday 27th June 2026 to hear your favourite authors talk about their recent publications and discuss all things books books books! The festival will be taking place in our garden marquee, includes events for both children and adults, and hopefully some sunny skies!☀️🤞 📚Who can you expect to see? 🔅10am - Rachel Chivers Khoo on Finders of the Silverthorn Forest (for children) 🎟️£5 🔅11am - Kiran Millwood Hargrave on The Ship of Strays (for children) 🎟️ £5 🔅12pm - Simon Mason with Cara Hunter on The Dangerous Stranger 🎟️£10 🔅1.30pm - Zakia Sewell with Marchelle Farrell on Finding Albion 🎟️£10 🔅3pm - Lucy Steeds with Anbara Salam on The Artist 🎟️£10 🔅4.30pm - Mick Herron and Mark Billingham in conversation on crime fiction 🎟️£10 🔆6.30pm - The Adventure of the Speckled Band performed by Andrew Murton 🎟️ £10 ℹ️For more information, head to our website dauntbooks.co.uk/summertown. Ticket prices vary for each event, and can often sell out, so do make sure to book your tickets now online or in the shop! We are very much looking forward to what is sure to be another brilliant festival! 🎉❤️

🎉🗓️On Saturday 27th June we are excited to be bringing you an entire day of events, for children and adults, at our second ever Day Festival. Events will be running from 10am - 6:30pm, with a bar for refreshments and a chance to get books signed by your favourite authors. Please note, tickets are sold separately for each event, and can be bought online or in the shop. The shop and garden are both wheelchair accessible. For more information, see our pinned post or head to our website. ✨✨✨✨✨ Next on the bill is Simon Mason, who will be joined by Cara Hunter to talk about his latest novel The Dangerous Stranger, the fifth book in his DI Ryan Wilkins series. Mason’s books have become a bit of staple for crime-fiction lovers in Oxford in particular, and readers will be pleased to know that The Dangerous Stranger too takes place amongst the scholars, poets and quite cobbled streets of Oxford. That is until disaster strikes and a devastating hate crime, in which a young man is set on fire and killed, rocks the city. DIs Ray and Ryan Wilkins (not related) couldn’t be more opposite; the street-smart and caravan raised DI Ryan and the worldly, Oxford-educated DI Ray may be an unconventional match, but they must come together to seek justice as the investigation unravels even bigger secrets. We are so pleased to welcome Simon and Cara back to the shop. They’ll be in conversation at 12pm. Tickets are £10 and can be booked online or in the shop.

📚Today Amie recommends Go Gentle, by Maria Semple. I’m a big fan of Semple’s earlier novel, Where’d You Go Bernadette, and she brings the same combination of wit, whimsy and surprising depth to Go Gentle. Adora Hazzard is a contented divorcée who relishes her teenage daughter, her job as a moral tutor for an old-money family and the bliss of finally being solo. Alone but far from lonely, she’s also quietly assembling a ‘coven’ of like-minded single women on the sixth floor of the legendary Ansonia building on New York’s Upper West Side. Together, they share groceries, dog walkers - and the knowledge that despite their age, they’re only just getting started. Adora’s life philosophy is simple: want only what you already have. But a chance encounter threatens her joyfully curated life, leaving Adora questioning if she wants more from life - even if she must risk everything to get it? Go Gentle is a thrilling story of one woman’s mid-life transformation, a romance with wit and a globe-trotting mother-daughter story, all wrapped in a mystery...with a twist!

It’s not long now until sports writer Tim Wigmore will be in conversation with artist & cricket fan Tom de Freston, on his award-winning book Test Cricket: A History. 🏏 🗓️Join us on Monday 18th May, 7pm, as Tim talks about his book that brings to life both Test cricket on the pitch and the game’s social significance around the world. Tickets are £7 including a glass of wine or soft drink, and can be booked online or in the shop. 📚About the book: Test cricket is on the cusp of its 150th anniversary. For the first time, Test Cricket: A History tells the full, gripping story of the players and stories that have shaped the game’s evolution since 1877. This captivating tour is illuminated by dozens of exclusive interviews with the game’s greatest players, including Sachin Tendulkar, Pat Cummins, Michael Holding, Muthiah Muralidaran, Kevin Pietersen, Ian Chappell, Dale Steyn and Rahul Dravid. ✨✨✨✨✨ Praise for Test Cricket: A History ‘…this is a colourful, modern take on the sport’s most treasured format. I’ve commentated on over 400 Tests and learned so much from this wonderful book. Wigmore lays bare the challenges Test cricket faces and the fight required to preserve it.’ - Jonathan Agnew, BBC Test Match Special ‘A vibrant, global history of the oldest form of cricket. Told across decades and vast spans of geography, using history, memoir, stats, science and the voices of greats living and gone, it is destined to be a classic . . . Monumental.’ - The Hindu ‘Wonderfully wide-focused, unfailingly readable and laced with passages of insightful analysis…’ - David Kynaston

Great event at @Dauntbooks in Oxford last night, chairing the inimitable Nicholas Shakespeare for the launch of his new book, Frame 37. And look at all the books I got!

Thank you everyone who joined us last night at our sold out event with Nicholas Shakespeare and Abir Mukherjee on Frame 37! Signed copies of both speakers’ books are in stock now. Our next event is next week - on Monday 18th May, sports writer Tim Wigmore will be in conversation with artist & cricket fan Tom de Freston, on his award-winning book Test Cricket: A History. Tickets are £7 including a glass of wine or soft drink and can be booked online or in the shop.

Join us to hear from Sarah Gilmartin as she discusses her brilliant new novel of secrets and betrayal, Little Vanities, with Kate Collins. Wry, sexy and deftly observed, Little Vanities is a novel about the perilous thrill of stepping outside the roles we’ve been given - and the distance between the lives we imagined and the ones we find ourselves living. Sarah and Kate will be in conversation at 7pm on Thursday 28th May. Tickets are £7 including a glass of wine or soft drink and can be booked online or in the shop. “Acutely observed, beautifully written, compelling readable, fizzing with insight and truthfulness, this is a wonderful novel” - Joseph O’Connor “Gilmartin is a natural writer: she gives us terrific, complex characters and strong themes, in a prose that is fluent and charged with insight” - Anne Enright About the book: Dylan, Stevie and Ben have been inseparable since their days at Trinity, when life pulsed with possibility. A single glance can still summon their younger selves: dancing beneath flashing lights, salt on their skin after swims in Dublin Bay. Two decades later, their dreams have faltered. Dylan, once a rugby star, is stranded on the sofa, tended by his wife, Rachel. Across town, in their new build, Stevie and Ben’s relationship has settled into an airless routine. Then, after countless auditions, Ben lands a role in Pinter’s Betrayal. As rehearsals unfold, the play’s shifting loyalties seep into reality, stirring old jealousies and awakening forbidden longings, as each must confront how far they are willing to go in pursuit of desire.

🎾Today Elizabeth recommends Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men’s Tennis by @giricube 🎾This brilliant book is the story of the incredible rise of tennis players Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, and their growing rivalry - a new generation of superstars following years of domination by ‘old gods’ Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and Rafael Nadal. Changeover explores ambition and legacy while painting a twin portrait of the two men and the ways in which their personalities come through in their remarkable tennis, similar to John McPhee’s writing about Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner in his tennis classic Levels of the Game. Nathan has McPhee’s eye for detail, knack for storytelling and ear for beautiful writing - I can’t stop rereading the passage about the visual beauty of clay courts - plus a sense of humour that lifts this book out of its niche, making it accessible and entertaining to a less informed reader, whilst still delighting the most diehard of tennis fans. 🎾Changeover by Giri Nathan is an unputdownable treat, and an ideal read to prepare for an upcoming @dauntbookspub title, Dad Had a Bad Day by @apolitanoff - about one sad dad’s spiral into tennis obsession...out in July and described by Nathan as ‘hilarious, acrid, haunted, and sweet – yet none of those notes landed where I expected. This novel wrong-footed me. It left me stumbling on the hard court, and I can’t stop thinking about it.’

Excited to be doing a few events to mark the paperback launch of Test Cricket: A History - The Sunday Times Sports Book of The Year for 2025. Come along and have a drink and a chat here are links to buy tickets for all the various events - /shop/events/tim-wigmore/ /products/sports-writing-season-tim-wigmore?srsltid=AfmBOopR_gizxZ1ZU-exk9b5-u7HWtzAFlc09Nv8gNeLN4aHhzD1OMgR /shop/events/tim-wigmore-in-conversation-with-nathan-johns/ https://backstory.london/products/10th-june-7-30pm-tim-wigmore-test-cricket-a-history /wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Festival-Programme-2026.pdf

📚Today Amie recommends I Am, I Am, I Am, by Maggie O’Farrell. One of the most moving books I have read in a long time, this mesmerising book makes it onto the top of my list of favourite memoirs. Told as a series of seventeen near-death experiences – a childhood illness she wasn’t expected to survive; a terrifying encounter on a remote walking path; a traumatic, mis-managed labour… Her stories highlight life’s fragility and our tenacity toward survival. I’ve read most of O’Farrell’s works and always look forward to what she has to say, but this one is truly something special.