Penguin @ 90: Michael Magee, Jan Carson and Stephen Sexton
2025-07-03 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/London) | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for a celebration of the 90th anniversary of Penguin Books with three of the finest authors within Penguin-waddling distance of the bookshop: Michael Magee, Jan Carson and Stephen Sexton!
Our authors will be having an informal conversation on their favourite Penguin titles, the significance of Penguin titles and bookselling, and the importance of storytelling.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***

Book Launch: Liam McIlvanney - The Good Father
2025-07-23 18:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us on Wednesday 23rd July for an evening in the bookshop to celebrate the launch of Liam McIlvanney’s new novel, The Good Father, published by Bonnier books. Book your free ticket here. Signed copies of the book can be pre-ordered here.
About The Good Father:
Gordon and Sarah Rutherford are normal, happy people with successful, fulfilling lives. They have a son they adore, a house on the beach and a safe, friendly and honest community in a picture-postcard town on the Ayrshire coast. Until one day, Bonnie the lab comes in from the beach alone.
Their son, Rory, has gone – the only trace left behind is a single black Adidas slider. Their lives don’t fall apart immediately. While there’s still hope (and no body) they dig deep and try to carry on.
It’s a process of abrasion – a wearing away of happiness and normality; a slow degradation, a gradual breakdown – until they’ll never be the people they were before. This sort of tragedy impacts a whole town. Does the community still feel the same after? What are folk saying about you? Who are your friends? Who can you trust? When the worst thing has happened and you’ve lost everything, you either go under or you rebuild and start again.
‘Beautifully written, this is easily one of the finest crime novels I’ve read in a very long time’ C.M. EWAN
‘Heart-stopping and heart-rending, this is Liam McIlvanney’s best novel yet’ VAL MCDERMID

Book Launch: The Black Pool by Tim MacGabhann
2025-07-24 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookstore for an evening with Tim MacGabhann to celebrate the launch of his memoir, The Black Pool, published by Hodder & Stoughton. Tim will be introduced by local author Jan Carson.
***Book your free ticket here.***
A raw and powerful memoir of addiction and recovery, across three continents and multiple drugs, from early childhood through adulthood.

Following an obsessive mind trying (and failing) to find relief, The Black Pool is a gripping thrill-ride through violent, chaotic underworlds. Tracing the roots of an illness through the failures of youth and adolescence and finally back to childhood, it’s about all the wrong places where addicts look for transcendence – from work, to relationships, to writing, to anger.
It shows what happens when everything falls apart. It shows us rock bottom and the start of the journey to recovery from there. It’s a memoir shot full of holes and shocking clarities. And towards the end, it achieves something like serenity – something like recovery.

Signing Event: M.W. Craven
2025-08-16 13:00 - 15:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
M.W. Craven will be joining us in the bookshop to sign copies of his new book, The Final Vow. ​
***Book your free ticket here.***
Mike is a UK bestselling author, best known for his Cumbrian based crime and thriller novels starring Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw.
About The Final Vow:
A shooting at Gretna Green. A bride is murdered on her wedding day, seconds after she slips on her new ring. It’s brutal and bloody but she isn’t the first victim and she won’t be the last.
With the body count now at 17, people are terrified, not knowing where the sniper will strike next. With the nation in a state of panic, the police are at a loss and turn to Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw – the only team who just might be able to track down a serial killer following no discernible pattern and with the whole country as his personal hunting ground. Can Poe and Tilly stop an unstoppable assassin, who never misses his mark and never makes a mistake? Or will he find them before they find him…
‘Washington Poe is a brilliant creation from one of the finest and most inventive crime writers of today’ Peter James
‘Mesmerising, macabre and magnificent. Poe and Tilly are unstoppable’ Chris Whitaker
‘If you haven’t read any M.W. Craven yet, fix that immediately’ S. A. Cosby
‘I’ve been following M.W. Craven’s Poe/Tilly series from the very beginning, and it just gets better and better ‘ Peter Robinson
‘Poe and Tilly books are a joy’ Steve Cavanagh
‘In Tilly and Poe, M.W. Craven has created a stand-out duo who are two of the most compelling characters in crime fiction in recent years’ Fiona Cummins

EVENT POSTPONED Steve Cavanagh - Two Kinds of Stranger - Book Launch
2025-08-21 18:00 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL WE HAVE HAD TO POSTPONE THIS EVENT. WHEN WE HAVE A NEW DATE ARRANGED WE WILL NOTIFY EVERYONE WHO HAS RESERVED A PLACE FOR THE ORIGINAL DATE. APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE CAUSED

Join us for a book launch with the Award Winning Novelist
Steve Cavanagh

BOOK YOUR FREE PLACE HERE
PRE ORDER YOUR COPY HERE
SHE HELPED A PERFECT A STRANGER. SHE DIDN’T KNOW HE WAS THE PERFECT KILLER
Perfect husband. Perfect apartment. Perfect friends and the perfect job.
As an internet celebrity – famed for her random acts of kindness – everyone knew it.
So when a betrayal causes her to lose it all, millions of people are watching. But even at her lowest, Ellie will always help someone in need. Which makes her the perfect target for a sadistic game.
Because as she soon learns, you can never trust a stranger – and a seemingly random encounter plunges her into a nightmare worse than she ever imagined. The only person she can turn to is conman turned trial lawyer Eddie Flynn, who must take on a case where nothing is what it seems. With the most cruelly ingenious mind manipulating events from the shadows, everyone is in danger – including Eddie and his family.
The award-winning, Sunday Times Top Five bestseller returns with a brand new thriller featuring the unforgettable Eddie Flynn.
Praise for Steve Cavanagh:
‘Unputdownable’ ALEX MICHAELIDES
‘Will keep you guessing until the very end’ IAN RANKIN
‘The ultimate treat for crime fiction fans’ JANICE HALLETT’
Books this ingenious don’t come along very often’ MICHAEL CONNELLY
‘A fantastic thriller writer’ MARK BILLINGHAM’

Steph McGovern - Deadline - In Conversation
2025-08-26 18:00 - 19:30 | Crescent Arts Centre, 2-4 University Rd Belfast BT7 1NH, United Kingdom
No Alibis Bookstore in Association with Pan Macmillan Publishers welcome you to an event with Steph McGovern to celebrate the publication of her novel
DEADLINE

Author Photo Credit Carolyn Mendelsohn
PLEASE NOTE-NEW VENUE-CRESCENT ARTS CENTRE UNIVERSITY ROAD BELFAST
‘A pacy, witty, engaging thriller, entertaining and delightfully authentic, but hard-hitting and thought-provoking too. I can’t wait for you all to read it.’ Ann Cleeves
Your child has been kidnapped.
You are live on television.
Going live in 10, 9, 8…
Today is a huge day for TV reporter Rose’s career. A live interview with one of the most powerful men in the country, on one of the nation’s biggest TV shows.
But when she hears an unfamiliar voice in her ear, she knows something is very wrong.
Her earpiece has been hacked. She’s live on air in the middle of the interview and someone is telling her that they have kidnapped her family.
In order to protect them, Rose must do exactly what the hijacker says. They are in control now.

BOOK YOUR FREE TICKETS HERE.
‘Fascinating and authentic peek behind the scenes… Steph McGovern lifts the lid and hooks us in with an irresistible set up.’ Val McDermid
‘A fantastic premise. I was totally hooked from the dramatic start. Deadline is racy and entertaining with a thought provoking core. I’m already looking forward to reading more Rose Steedman adventures.’ Cecilia Ahearn
Steph McGovern is an award-winning broadcaster who currently presents The Rest is Money podcast with Robert Peston.
Steph has worked in journalism for over twenty years, eight of them as part of the BBC Breakfast family. She went on to present her own BAFTA-nominated live daily show, Steph’s Packed Lunch, on Channel 4 and is a regular Have I Got News for You panelist and host.
Steph is an avid crime reader and has interviewed countless authors including Val McDermid, Harlan Coben, Ann Cleeves, Hillary Clinton, Lee Child and Don Winslow, as well as judging the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award at the Harrogate Crime Festival since 2019.
Deadline is her first novel.

Poetry Launch: Shakeema Edwards - Recipe for Leaving
2025-08-28 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Shakeema Edwards to celebrate the launch of her pamphlet, “Recipe for Leaving”, published by Green Bottle Press. Shakeema will be introduced by local poet Milena Williamson.
***Book your free ticket here***
Shakeema Edwards’ poems explore accidents of birth, the aftermath of death and the scaffolding of a life inbetween. Through poems about her heritage, her relatives’ stories and domestic (and other) skills, Shakeema questions how we make the choices that form us. Antigua and its flora and fauna are lushly described through her memories and family reminiscences – ‘…love is the clash and tang of crushed papaya/nestled between saltfish and choba’ (The Chemistry of Cooking). As she changes countries and chooses what to leave behind, her poems excavate identity and belonging – ‘Take fifteen minutes outside the airport to memorise palm trees/down to their roots, down to the loam./Leave.’ (Packing). A fresh and distinctive new voice, Shakeema Edwards is one to watch.

Book Launch: Dr Bot by Charlotte Blease
2025-09-18 18:30 - 19:30 | Crescent Arts Centre, 2-4 University Rd Belfast BT7 1NH, United Kingdom
Join us in the Crescent Arts Centre for an evening with Charlotte Blease to celebrate the launch of her non-fiction title, Dr. Bot : Why Doctors Can Fail Us—and How AI Could Save Lives, published by Yale University Press. Charlotte will be interviewed by radio presenter William Crawley.
***Book your free ticket here***
About Dr Bot:
How does AI compare to a doctor when it comes to saving lives? Doctors are under-resourced and face unprecedented levels of stress, with rising patient numbers and ever developing medical knowledge. But at the same time, they are all too human, prone to racial, class and social biases that affect the care patients receive. Can we improve patient experience and alleviate the burdens of doctors at the same time? In this groundbreaking study, Charlotte Blease reveals how AI, if handled with care, could emerge as the most reliable physician in history. Drawing on interviews with authorities in AI, doctors and patients, Blease shows how technology – despite some resistance – is already making a difference.
From diagnosis and second opinions to treatment and aftercare, AI has the potential to revolutionise our healthcare.

Commedia Mortale - Wayne Holloway in conversation with Wendy Erskine and Adrian Duncan: The unreliable author; lived experience and spinning a yarn.
2025-10-02 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an event with
Wayne Holloway in conversation with Wendy Erskine Adrian Duncan:
The unreliable author; lived experience and spinning a yarn.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***
Liguria, Italy. In a mountain village sits an old farmhouse that stores the memories of those who have lived there and suffers the tales of the visitors who come and go. The house weaves its magic on all who encounter it.New owners move in and over time become entangled with a parade of oddball characters. From pagan ritual to the antics of modern village life, the clash between outsiders and locals, Commedia Mortale seeks to understand what is authentic in both: the tall tales of ageing Second World War Partisans, the dreams of a chef to travel to parts unknown supported by a Greek chorus of drunks, a talking parrot, and asylum-seeking footballers with their own dreams, and miraculously a visit to the village by Anthony Bourdain himself.
Parsed through the eyes of a film maker, the ultimate outsider, Commedia Mortale summons dreams of kinship and nightmares of enmity. Ranging across philosophy, food, history, love, loss and landscape, Holloway conjures up a unique portrait of a place, the fables of its past and the dilemma of how to live now.
‘“Idiosyncratic” doesn’t begin to get near him.’– Guardian
‘A Trojan horse of a novel. The conversational, high-energy prose causes one to open the gates and then all hell breaks loose.’– Percival Everett on Our Struggle

In Conversation Stephen Walker & Donna Traynor discuss "David Trimble - Peacemaker"
2025-10-10 19:30 - 21:30 | Europa Hotel, Great Victoria St, Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT2 7AP
Join author Stephen Walker in conversation with broadcaster Donna Traynor, as they discuss “Peacemaker” , the new book on David Trimble at the Europa Hotel in Belfast.

£15.00
(Plus Booking Fee)
Book Your Tickets Here
David Trimble was one of the most influential figures in modern British and Irish history. A Nobel Laureate, he negotiated the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 that helped to secure peace in Northern Ireland. In this first biography to chart Trimble’s life and death, award-winning journalist Stephen Walker vividly details how this shy Belfast academic changed the political landscape of Northern Ireland.
With the cooperation of the Trimble family, Peacemaker offers unparalleled insights into the life of a history maker: the first person to be elected First Minister of Northern Ireland and the last Ulster unionist to hold that title. Using interviews with his widow Lady Trimble and their grown-up children, the book colourfully charts Trimble’s story from the County Down city of Bangor, through the divisive world of unionist politics, to his crowning moment at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. It is a tale of how the leaders of unionism and nationalism worked together to end decades of violence to compromise and share power
Stephen Walker is an award winning journalist and the author of five books. He worked as a lobby correspondent at Westminster, an investigative reporter with Spotlight and he is a former BBC Political Correspondent.
Donna Traynor is one of Ireland’s most recognised and respected broadcasters with a journalistic career spanning more than three decades
Signed Books available on the night.
The Penthouse Suite
Europa Hotel
Belfast
Event Details
Starts at 7:30PM
Location
Europa Hotel Belfast – Penthouse Suite, Belfast, BT2 7AP

Poetry Launch: Jessica Traynor - New Arcana
2025-10-21 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Jessica Traynor to celebrate the launch of her new poetry collection, New Arcana, published by Bloodaxe Books.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***
Jessica Traynor’s New Arcana explores grief, bad boyfriends and the power of female friendship through readings of the Tarot and Tim Burton movies. Moving from teenage friendship and destructive relationships towards a tangling with the realities of family life, domesticity, and desire, this highly inventive collection builds into a heartbroken letter to a dear friend (personified in the poems as ‘lydia deetz’) who died by suicide. Interwoven with numbered poems from a newly imagined Major Arcana, New Arcana celebrates both the holding on, and the letting go.
New Arcana is Jessica Traynor’s fourth collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019) from Dedalus and Pit Lullabies (2022) from Bloodaxe.

Launch & In Conversation Event: The Cloud Kingdom by Máire Zepf & Andrew Whitson
2025-10-25 17:30 - 18:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Máire Zepf and Andrew Whitson to celebrate the launch of their new children’s picture book, Cloud Kingdom, published by Little Island.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***

About Cloud Kingdom:
An archipelago of interconnecting stories and fables filled with the fantastical and a love of the craft of storytelling.
When Nancy’s cat Pangur is stolen by the Faery people, she finds herself striking a deal like no other: she is now the one-and-only storyteller for the Faery Kingdom. So starts Máire Zepf’s enchanting story collection, reminiscent of fairytales and fables of past and present, but entirely new.
Máire Zepf is a multi-award-winning children’s author. Her books have been adapted for television and appear in ten languages worldwide. Máire was chosen as the first Children’s Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland in 2017. Andrew Whitson is an award-winning artist, author and publisher from Belfast native. He has illustrated over thirty books.

Saints - Tim MacGabhann in conversation with Wendy Erskine
2025-10-29 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Tim MacGabhann to celebrate the launch of his debut short story collection, Saints, published by Scratch Books.
Tim will be in conversation with Wendy Erskine.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***

About Saints:
The debut collection of short stories from celebrated crime writer Tim MacGabhann.
Nine breathtaking, gripping and oddly sublime tales of narcos, cops and addicts in modern-day Mexico. Gritty hard-boiled tales shot through with the hallowed light of the miraculous, written in MacGabhann’s pyrotechnic exhilarating prose. A constellation of rich, vivacious stories of sewer diving, ghosts, a falling satellite and vengeful pigs.
‘The stories in Saints are wise, sad and electric, gentle and attentive in their depiction of even the most jagged, destructive impulses of the human heart.’ Colin Barrett
‘This handful of offbeat lives, their vivid Mexican setting, their human light and shade, are so well rendered they offer a sense of special access to other realities. As in life, each story is a wormhole to the next, a connectivity that not only makes a novel of this collection but inflates its reading to four dimensions, with all the discovery that comes from entering a new milieu in person. For me this book does the heavy lifting of literature: more than a good read – it’s a parallel life.’ D.B.C. Pierre
‘Tim MacGabhann works from an imaginative world that does not rest. His living characters open up their hearts to him, and he reports back to us – a work of sublime devotion to a place and a moment that has been rendered in perfect detail. I go back to these stories long after reading them, and wonder how those people are. It’s a sweet and violent magic, and I remain gladly under its spell.’ Ben Pester
About the author:
Tim MacGabhann is an Irish writer who divides his time between the UK and Mexico City. His first two novels, Call Him Mine and How to Be Nowhere, were published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Other fiction, non-fiction and poetry has also appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, The Tangerine, Magma, Poetry Ireland Review, and The Rialto, among others.

Poetry Ireland launch: Trumpet 14 edited by Nandi Jola
2025-10-30 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Please join us in the bookshop for an evening to celebrate the launch of Trumpet 14, published by Poetry Ireland. Trumpet is a bite sized literary pamphlet of reviews, opinions and essays on poetry and the arts. This issue of Trumpet is guest edited by Nandi Jola.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***
Trumpet 14
Trumpet 14, edited by Nandi Jola, is now available for pre-order purchase online. It features poetry from Shelley Tracey, Mari Maxwell, Sello Huma, and Amy Abdullah Barry, among others, as well as striking artwork from Anfaal Al-Mughalles.
Trumpet offers an alternative commentary on the poetry and literary scenes, including both mainstream and marginalised voices. Nandi Jola’s issue focuses on themes of migration, memory, and breath/breathlessness. From the editor: ‘Breath has that lingering sense of travelling somewhere, of being inhaled by something or someone else, and by unravelling the connections of breath comes topics of seeking refuge, drowning, injustice, citizenship, and forced migration.’
These themes are explored in essays and short stories as well as poetry. Viviana Fiorentino considers the concepts of ius sanguinis, ius soli, and ius culturae, and the legal distinctions surrounding the immigration process in her essay, ‘Citizenship’. Alanna Offield’s ‘A Crow Story’ speaks on belonging and ‘flying between worlds’ from New Mexico and the US/Mexico border to Belfast. The issue also includes a short story from Pallavi Padma-Uday as well as a review, by Landa Wo, of Japa Fire: An Anthology of Poems on African and African Diasporic Migration.

Paul Waters - Murder in Moonlit Square Launch
2025-11-13 18:00 - 20:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us at No Alibis Bookstore for the launch of Paul Waters’ new book Murder in Moonlit Square, published by Bedford Square Publishers.
Book your FREE ticket here on TicketSource
When semi-retired Irish nun Sister Agatha Murphy meets Avtar Mehta round the back of his historic Delhi hotel, they form an instant bond over a sneaky smoke and good gossip. Then a street robbery outside the hotel, a dead body inside it, and the disappearance of a pilgrim guest bring the local police to the hotel, determined to close their cases quickly, and with them the Delhi Haveli Hotel.
Sister Agatha and Avtar must race to stay one step ahead of the police, the Indian secret service and a hidden killer – as well as keeping their sense of humour through a terrorism scare in the run up to Christmas on the colourful streets of old Delhi.

BOOK LAUNCH - KALIE REID - THE SACRED SPACE BETWEEN
2025-11-27 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for a Book Launch to celebrate the publication of The Sacred Space Between.

Book your FREE space here
​About the Book.
A devout iconographer must paint an exiled saint in this sumptuous gothic romantasy full of slow-burn tension and windswept moors, for fans of DIVINE RIVALS and A STUDY IN DROWNING ‘Nothing less than blasphemy brought you to me,’ Jude told her. Maeve trembled. He was an open flame.
Any closer, and she’d burn. Jude is a saint with dangerous magic – exiled by the Abbey to live out his days alone in a decaying estate on the moors – until gifted iconographer Maeve is sent to paint his icon. Suspecting she’s a spy for her beloved Abbey, Jude makes it his mission to get rid of Maeve as soon as possible.
That is, until he discovers that Maeve holds the same tainted magic as he does, and she may be the key to destroying the Abbey’s power… But this institution has eyes everywhere, and the only thing the Abbey loves more than a saint is a martyr.

Neil Shawcross 20th Anniversary Calendar Signing
2025-11-29 15:00 - 17:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
We will be having the great Neil Shawcross come in to sign our 2026 No Alibis x Neil Shawcross calendars on Saturday 29th November, and it will be extra special as this will be the 20th Anniversary of our calendars!
He will be signing calendars from 3-5pm.

Marcus Patton - Out of the Frying Pan - Book Launch
2025-12-04 18:00 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for a book launch with Marcus Patton to celebrate the publication of
Out Of The Frying Pan – From Chaos to Contempt

Surely the world can’t be serious?
From events in the Ukraine, to the election of Donald Trump…Again, to chaos in the Middle East, Global Warming and a host of other calamities, Marcus Patton casts his comic graphic eye over recent international and local events.
Here is a panorama of the world at the end of 2025, with answers at the back of the book.

In Conversation with Steve Pyke - Scribendi: Portraits of Irish Writers
2025-12-06 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us at No Alibis for an event with Steve Pyke, who will be in conversation with Wendy Erskine, Glenn Patterson and Stephen Sexton about his book Scribendi: Portraits of Irish Writers. Book your free ticket on Ticketsource here!
Featuring 100 captivating portraits of many of Ireland’s greatest contemporary writers, alongside conversations with each on their writing life, Scribendi is a landmark book of portraits of Irish writers by internationally renowned photographer Steve Pyke. ‘I come from the English Midlands, but I became a photographer in Ireland. I made my first portraits in Dublin in the early 1980s.
It was immediately apparent to me then how important Irish writers are to their country, in a way I never saw in England or elsewhere. One of my earliest portrait sessions was in 1983, with the writer Neil Jordan in my first studio in London. I’ve gone on for the subsequent forty years photographing the Irish writers whose books have excited me. Early sitters include Seamus Heaney, Edna O’Brien and John McGahern.
More recent trips have led me to the next generation, such writers as Anne Enright, Kevin Barry and Louise Kennedy. I photographed these people because I had read their books and admired and wanted to meet them, and also to make a record for posterity. Their faces can bring to others something of the feeling and way of thinking behind their words.’ Steve Pyke is one of the world’s most renowned portrait photographers, has published 10 books to date, including the critically acclaimed novel I Could Read the Sky with Timothy O’Grady, and has worked among many other roles, as resident portrait photographer for The New Yorker from 2004-2014.

Oliver Jeffers - I'm Very Busy Book Signing
2025-12-14 13:00 - 15:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for a signing with Oliver Jeffers for his new book I’m Very Busy: A (Nearly Forgotten) Birthday Book.
Get your FREE ticket here!
A poignant – and laugh-out-loud funny – story about our busy lives and how we can fix our mistakes to show our friends how much we care. It’s Bridget’s birthday, and she thinks it would be fun to spend the day with friends. But Royal has places to go, Rodney has to see a man about a dog, Regis has to wash his hair and Pearl has a list of items she needs to cross off as quickly as she can.
Bridget’s friends are all too busy to hang out! Will Bridget have to spend her birthday all alone? In a story that shows how friends are more important than the busy-ness of a day, Oliver Jeffers’s bold and brilliant art pairs with a powerful story that makes readers realise what truly matters.
