Upcoming Events At The Book Nook

24.10.2025 @ 7pm
The Book Nook, 6B High Street, Stewarton, KA3 5AA

Your Past Is Right Behind You

Jo has always kept her head down and surrounded herself with strangers who know nothing about her Mum's murder. But when she receives a box of unopened letters written by the killer, her past creeps into her present, and Jo is forced to question the events that led to the killing. Their message is clear: I'll find you, no matter how long it takes.

But Jo's tired of living in fear. Determined to protect her new life and loved ones from the tragic violence of her past, Jo embarks on a mission to find the killer - before they find her. A pacy, twisty thriller about secrets and betrayal, set amongst the historic streets of Edinburgh.

31.10.25 7pm
Feel free to come in Hallowe’en costumes!
Grief has a voice—and in The Howling, it howls. Join Michael J. Malone on All Hallows’ Eve for a reading and discussion of his newest novel, a psychological thriller steeped in sorrow and shadow. This is a night for those who love their fiction dark, their characters haunted, and their endings anything but tidy.

The compelling, chilling third instalment in the Annie Jackson Mysteries series…
Two men, centuries apart, dream of being a wolf. One is burned at the stake. Another is locked in a psychiatric hospital for most of his life. And Annie Jackson is about to find out why…

Tuesday 11th November @ 7pm

Darkland Tales see Scotland’s best writers re-imagining stories from the country’s history, myth and legend. This series reclaims history for a modern audience, with Scotland’s greatest contemporary novelists and storytellers taking on the challenge of producing Scottish history 2.0 – a redux of landmark moments from the past, viewed through a modern lens and alive to modern sensibilities.

While each book has a unique voice and distinctive individual identity, the Darkland Tales are united by their punky, anarchic and deliberately in-your-face aesthetic. These books are sharp, provocative and darkly comic, mining that seam of sedition and psychological drama that has always featured in the best of Scottish literature.

On 9 July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a labourer from Liniclate on the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother and aunt. At trial in Inverness he was found to be criminally insane and confined in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison. Some years later, Angus’s older brother Malcolm recounts the events leading up to the murders while trying to keep a grip on his own sanity.

From Graeme Macrae Burnet, the Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project, comes a dark, psychological thriller, leavened by moments of black humour and absurdity.

18.11.25 7pm Stewarton Area Centre

Nothing, on earth or below it, freezes faster than the worthless heart.
A powerful reimagining of the Norse myth of Hel by best-selling author journalist and broadcaster, Sally Magnusson.

Before she was a hideous monster, the queen of the underworld was simply Hel. But cast as a girl out of lofty Asgard, realm of the gods, by Odin the Allfather, Hel's fate as the terrible goddess of death is sealed.
Half beauty, half crone, she has reigned for aeons in the starless darkness of Niflheim, grimly welcoming the most pitiful of death's travellers to her ice-locked prison. Until one day a memory shifts, and she is forced to seek out the sun in Midgard, where humans have made their home.

Faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Helen Firth makes the impulsive decision to return to Orkney after forty years to make peace with her past. Under the wintering solstice sun, she reconnects with the ungainly but affable Thorfinn Coffin, who helps her address the real reason she has returned to the islands: to die.

As Helen draws closer to death and ever closer to Thorfinn, Hel in turn is intrigued by Helen. She, too, has a past to confront and a lesson to learn: that perhaps who she thinks she is isn't who she is really meant to be.
The Shapeshifter's Daughter celebrates the joy of reclaiming our stories.

'Frankly' with Nicola Sturgeon on Friday 5th Dec 2025 at 7pm

We are excited to welcome Nicola Sturgeon back for a third evening of engaging conversation and distinctive insights.

‘Frankly’ is the long-awaited, intimate memoir from Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first female first minister and former leader of the SNP, reflecting on her life and times at the forefront of Scottish and British politics. In this captivating memoir, Nicola Sturgeon takes readers from her working-class roots in Ayrshire to the forefront of Scottish politics as the country’s first female and longest-serving first minister.

Sturgeon offers an insider’s view of key political moments, including the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, the SNP’s rise to power, the Scottish Independence Referendum, the complexities of Brexit and the unforeseen challenges of the Covid pandemic.
With candour and insight, she shares personal achievements and regrets, discusses the challenges of being a woman in a high-stakes political arena and reveals the person behind the public figure. The result is a deeply personal and revealing memoir from one of Britain’s most significant political leaders of recent times.

A seasonal treat from global bestselling, award-winning author Jenny Colgan with her new novel ‘The Secret Christmas Library’

After Mirren Sutherland finds a priceless antique book in her great aunt's attic, she is contacted by Jamie McPherson, who is hopeful she might be able to find another one- a book lost in his own house. He doesn't even know the name of it, only that it is so valuable it could potentially save the entire estate from ruin, and time is running out. On arriving at Jamie's vast crumbling home in the highlands of Scotland (on the family train, no less), Mirren meets rival bookseller Theo Palliser, whose motives are not remotely honourable; and sets out on the quest.

As the snow falls in the highlands, cutting off the outside world, the three of them, plus Maggie, the estate manager, do their best to uncover the last hope of the MacPherson clan before the year ends.
Caught between devastatingly attractive and immoral Theo, and the distracted and worried Jamie, will Mirren find the book ... and lose her heart?