We’re a quarter of the way through the year already. The weather is getting better, nice things are happening outside, and sometimes we all want something to distract us from all the doom and gloom happening in the world. Hopefully we can try and help with that a little bit.

The last few weeks have brought about the paperback reissues of a few major titles that have been hits for us when they were first out – notably Matt Haig’s ‘The Comfort Book’, and last years Booker Prize winner, ‘The Promise’ by Damon Galgut.

Some cracking titles have come out in hardback, too, if that’s more your style – ‘Ten Steps To Nanette’, the memoir by amazing comedian and all-round excellent person Hannah Gadsby, and ‘The Marmalade Diaries’, the new book by local writer Ben Aitken being two personal highlights.

Despite my comment above about trying to block out all the news that’s going on – obviously it’s still important to keep on top of it and do our bit, so we’ve been involved with a few fundraising efforts to help with the situation in Ukraine.

We’ve been selling giant sunflower kits to raise money for the Hampshire Ukrainian Community, plus we’re putting any of our proceeds from the sales of popular local author Dave Allen’s books towards his donations to the Disasters Emergency Committee.

We’ve also managed to finally get hold of some eagerly-awaited reprints of some titles from some of Ukraine’s best authors – which should be up for sale by the time you read this. I’m very keen to add ‘Grey Bees’ by Andrey Kurkov and ‘Your Ad Could Go Here’ by Oksana Zabuzhko.

As always, I’ll sign off with a reminder that if we don’t have something on the shelf – it’s no hassle to try and order it for you, so please always give us a try before resorting to the evil online overlords!

Website: pigeonbooks.co.uk
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Address: 1 Albert Road, Southsea
Email: info@pigeonbooks.co.uk
Telephone: 07311 186312