No Alibis Bookstore

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 (Europe/London) | 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.

Book Launch: Tim MacGabhann - Found in a Context of Destruction
2026-02-19 18:00 - 20:30
Join us at No Alibis for the launch of Tim MacGabhann’s new poetry collection from Banshee Press ‘Found in a Context of Destruction’, reading with Jessica Traynor.

Book your free place here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/no-alibis-bookstore-ltd/t-aavkzev
Noted novelist and essayist Tim MacGabhann’s debut collection demonstrates a rare confidence and coherence. These formally assured and blackly funny poems chart the course of addiction and recovery, contemplating the injuries a body and mind can sustain, and what joys we find in these darker spaces in the shape of friendship, music, and community. The spare, stark poems of love and survival in Found in a Context of Destruction open windows on rarely-seen vistas, bringing us on a delirious but vividly captured journey from Ireland to Mexico.

Book Launch: Sinéad Morrissey - Among Communists
2026-03-20 17:30 - 18:45 | Crescent Arts Centre, 2-4 University Rd Belfast BT7 1NH, United Kingdom
Join us to launch the long-awaited memoir from TS Eliot award-winning Belfast poet, Sinéad Morrissey, who will be in conversation with Scott McKendry. Set against the backdrop of a vanished culture of Belfast Communism – its endless meetings thick with cigarette smoke, its protests, marches, sports days, holidays, discos and jumble sales – ‘Among Communists’ tells a history of the Northern Irish conflict unlike any other while simultaneously charting a young writer’s journey into writing poetry.
Book your free place here: https://crescentarts.org/events/among-communists-by-sinead-morrissey-with-scott-mckendry
No Alibis Special Edition available for pre-order here: https://noalibis.com/product/among-communists/

Book Launch: Liz Nugent - The Truth About Ruby Cooper
2026-03-24 18:00 - 20:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for an evening with Liz Nugent to celebrate the launch of her new novel, The Truth About Ruby Cooper, published by Penguin Books.
*** BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE ***
You can order a copy of the book on our website here!
About the book:
Ruby Cooper and her sister, Erin, live an idyllic life in their close-knit church community in Boston.
But when Ruby is sixteen, she is involved in an incident that causes her family’s world to implode. Across decades, the fallout leaves a wake of destruction behind Ruby in Dublin and Erin in Boston. Not that Ruby wants to think about the past.
But it can’t stay a secret forever.

It Brought A Smile To Your Ear - Downtown Radio 50 Years On
2026-03-31 18:00 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
JOIN US FOR A BOOK LAUNCH

IT BROUGHT A SMILE TO YOUR EAR – DOWNTOWN RADIO 50 YEARS ON.

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PURCHASE A COPY OF THE BOOK HERE
50 YEARS AGO ON 16 MARCH 1976 DOWNTOWN RADIO HIT THE AIRWAVES OF NORTHERN IRELAND. IT PROVED TO BE A WATERSHED MOMENT DROP KICKING RADIO HERE TOWARDS THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND.
IT’S POTENT MIX OF MUSIC, NEWS AND INFORMATION WAS AN INSTANT HIT WITH LOCAL AUDIENCES WHO RELISHED HEARING CHEERFUL LOCAL VOICES ON A RADIO STATION BASED IN THE HEART OF THEIR COMMUNITY.
THE FIRST PRESENTER TO GREET AN AUDIENCE EAGER FOR SOMETHING NEW WAS JOHN PAUL. THEN THERE WAS HENDI, BIG T AND EVERYONE’S FAVOURITE AUNTIE CANDY DEVINE WHO HAD LONG SINCE FORESAKEN BRISBANE FOR EAST BELFAST.
OTHERS LIKE IVAN MARTIN & RICHARD YOUNG, LYNDA-JAYNE, JOHN DALY, RONAN KELLY, JOHNNY HERO AND FRANK MITCHELL FOLLOWED AND QUICKLY BECAME FIRM FAVOURITES WITH LOCAL LISTENERS.
THIS BOOK ‘IT BROUGHT A SMILE TO YOUR EAR’ IS THE STORY OF DOWNTOWN RADIO. HOW DID IT COME TO EXIST.
WHO WERE THE PEOPLE BEHIND IT.
HOW DID THEY GET THE LICENCE TO BRING INDEPENDENT LOCAL RADIO TO NORTHERN IRELAND.
IT ALSO TAKES READERS BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE STATION’S NEWTOWNARDS HQ AND GETS UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL TO SOME OF THE BROADCASTERS WHO MADE DOWNTOWN THE RUNAWAY SUCCESS IT BECAME.
THERE IS NO DOUBT THE STATION HOLDS A SPECIAL PLACE IN THE HEARTS OF MANY RADIO FANS HERE .
THIS BOOK COMES OUT AS THE STATION NOT ONLY CELEBRATES IT’S 50TH BIRTHDAY BUT ALSO MOVES TO A NEW HOME IN CENTRAL BELFAST.
“ ONLY IN IRELAND WOULD YOU FIND A RADIO STATION SITUATED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRY CALLED DOWNTOWN RADIO”. BILLY CONNOLLY
BUT THAT WAS DOWNTOWN SURPRISING PEOPLE FROM DAY ONE AND STILL MAKING THEM SMILE HALF A CENTURY LATER!.

Book Launch: Jan Carson - Few and Far Between
2026-04-07 18:30 - 20:00 | Crescent Arts Centre, 2-4 University Rd Belfast BT7 1NH, United Kingdom
Join us at The Crescent Arts Centre for the launch of Jan Carson’s new novel ‘Few and Far Between’, in conversation with Garrett Carr.
It’s summer 2017 and the last few residents of the Lough Neagh Archipelago are facing imminent eviction. The flood planned to combat a devastating algae outbreak will submerge their homes, forcing them back to the Mainland for the first time in fifty years. Robert-John and Marion Connolly came to the islands as children in the 1970s, following their mercurial father, an anthropologist studying the unique society that had developed there.
For many, the Neagh Archipelago represented a utopia, a chance to be free of the prejudices and history of Troubles era Northern Ireland. But perhaps this utopia wasn’t all that it seemed. Marion and Robert-John have grown accustomed to their haunted existence on the Ark, monitoring the mysterious Far Side, where ghostly figures linger and the land swallows secrets whole.
How will they cope with a new life on the Mainland? Is it possible to leave the past behind? And will the Ark ever let them go…
Book your free place here: https://crescentarts.org/events/few-and-far-between-by-jan-carson
Preorder your copy of the No Alibis Special Edition here: https://noalibis.com/product/few-and-far-between/

Everything that is Beautiful - Louise Nealon
2026-04-08 18:30 - 19:30 | Crescent Arts Centre, 2-4 University Rd Belfast BT7 1NH, United Kingdom
Everything that is Beautiful
by Louise Nealon
Book Launch

Wednesday 08 April 2026
Time 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Price Free Tickets Here
Join us at The Crescent for the launch of Louise Nealon’s new novel Everything that is Beautiful.
For Niamh Ryan, the Foleys are family. Her childhood flew by on their farm, playing with her best friend Peter and his sister Kate – all the while being doted on by their mother Helen and coached by their father Liam, a legendary former hurling player.
Now, following a distressing series of events, the family ties are strained. Niamh receives drunken phone calls and messages from Peter who can’t understand what derailed their burgeoning relationship three years ago. Meanwhile, Helen Foley is trying her best to escape her life by checking into guesthouses under the names of women she went to school with. In her life in Belfast, Kate is attempting to hold down a job and a relationship while carrying the weight of the family’s secrets, and feeling like she is the one to blame.
As a family wedding looms, and the women find themselves face to face, the knotty love that still binds Niamh, Helen and Kate might just bring them back together again.
Told through the perspectives of three very different women, Everything That Is Beautiful unfolds the story of one complicated family in startlingly honest prose. By turns funny and deeply moving, this is an unforgettable story of love and family, heartbreak and hope – and who we might become after we pick up the pieces.
The event will be introduced by Olivia Fitzsimons, and No Alibis will be selling copies of the book.
Louise Nealon is a writer from County Kildare, Ireland. Her debut novel Snowflake won Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and was the One Dublin One Book choice for 2024. It has been translated into over a dozen languages. Everything that is Beautiful is her second novel.

Book Event: Natalie Bennett - Change Everything
2026-04-11 17:30 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Green Party peer Natalie Bennett to celebrate the new edition of her book, Change Everything, published by Wilton Square Books.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***
About the book:
We are living in a social, political, economic and environmental emergency. The status quo is profoundly unstable; change is inevitable. Now is the time to get together to build a far healthier and more balanced world.The decades-old political orthodoxy – that greed is good, inequality doesn’t matter and we can keep treating the planet as a mine and a dumping ground – has been a recipe for disaster. Our world needs a new vision, the Green vision. From Universal Basic Income to free education, from less stuff but more life, to genuine democratic opportunities for all, Natalie Bennett brings together a holistic, hopeful and practical vision for the future.
The foundations of Change Everything are conversations with many thousands of people. We need to engage millions to bring together the imagination, talents and energy of all in order to build and repair our societies. Then a positive future is within our reach.
‘Essential reading’ Zack Polanski‘A full-throated battle-song… We are ready for another world, we are ready to change everything and this wonderful book shows us exactly how we are going to do that’ Caroline Lucas
‘Every so often, a book comes along that articulates exactly what our country needs. This is one. Essential reading’ Zack Polanski
‘If charm and enthusiasm were enough to win over more reluctant citizens to a programme of radical change, Natalie Bennett would be a strong contender for the challenge. Change Everything is essentially a manifesto – delivered with great gusto – of what a green perspective would look like across a wide array of subjects’ Ros Coward, The Ecologist
‘The real joy of this book is to be found in the breadth of Baroness Bennett’s reading and experiences. It’s a well-grounded text, a hallmark of a committed radical’ Liam Byrne, Politics Home

Book Launch: Niamh Mac Cabe - Four Night Seas
2026-04-14 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening to celebrate the launch of Niamh Mac Cabe’s collection of short stories, Four Night Seas, published by Lilliput Press.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***
Set across liminal landscapes, Four Night Seas is a collection of stories from award-winning author Niamh Mac Cabe feature characters navigating emotional or existential thresholds – grieving, seeking meaning or reconciling with the past.
Whether a reclusive sculptor haunted by guilt, a lost child drawing maps in the sand, or a greyhound silently shadowing a man to a mountain lake, Mac Cabe’s lyrical prose and ingenious narrative structures evoke an eerie, tender intimacy.
Rich and atmospheric, exploring themes of memory, solitude, loss, and the mysterious rhythms of nature and human connection, this collection blurs the line between the internal and external world, and invites us into spaces of beauty, melancholy and subtle transformation.

Paul Charles - Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove: A McCusker Mystery
2026-04-15 18:00 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Reserve your free space here

Join us for a Book Launch with Paul Charles to celebrate the publication of the third McCusker Mystery
Thomas Barry, Lefty Kelly, and Brendy McCusker were all teenage boys who were roaming the streets of Portrush, Country Antrim in Northern Ireland in 1976 when Thomas Barry quite literally bumped into Isabella Scott, and he uttered the words of the title.
In July 2019 the same Thomas Barry’s remains were discovered at the foot of the Pilgrim’s Steps in the Portrush Harbour. McCusker and DI Lily O’Carroll are conscripted from the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) in Belfast to help the already stretched local police force work on the case. They discover McCusker’s childhood friends Barry and Isabella Scott had married and then… well then everything became very complicated relationships wise involving Isabella’s sister, Colette, lawyers, accountants and showband singers. Thomas had become an ultra-successful property developer, sometimes in partnership with the Buckley Brothers, at least one of whom doesn’t mind the
cowboy approach to work.
Set against the backdrop of the (actual) UK Golf Open taking place in a small seaside town, where absolutely everyone has an opinion, and their opinions they are keen to share.
Paul Charles began his career in music at fifteen, managing his first band, The Blues by Five, in his hometown of Magherafelt, Northern Ireland.
Charles co-founded the Asgard Agency with Paul Fenn and has since represented major artists including Tom Waits, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant and Rory Gallagher. He has also programmed the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury Festival for 25 years. A lifelong writer, Charles published his first Christy Kennedy mystery in 1997. His eleventh novel, Departing Shadows, appeared in 2019.

Book Launch: Richard O'Rawe & Bernadette O'Rawe - Witch Hunt
2026-05-05 18:30 - 20:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop to celebrate the launch of Witch Hunt by Richard and Bernadette O’Rawe, published by Severn House.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***
About Witch Hunt:
‘Enriched by historical data, this spellbinding police procedural has a vicious sting in its tail’ – Kirkus Reviews Starred ReviewHow can you get away with murder in a city full of cameras? London’s DSI Grace O’Malley must solve a puzzling case in this highly addictive blend of gritty police procedural and creepy historical horror by dynamic father-daughter duo Richard and Bernadette O’Rawe.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live . . .
Detective Superintendent Grace O’Malley of London’s Metropolitan Police receives a dubious phone call. A self-proclaimed witch hunter, using the alias of Matthew Hopkins, the notorious seventeenth century witchfinder general, is leading her to his first victim.
Someone is exploiting the bloody history of the witchfinder to start a modern-day witch hunt, making sure their debut murder of a TV-medium is broadcast worldwide during Halloween night on Westminster Bridge.
The clock is ticking for this high-profile case. Grace needs to find out who is behind the premeditated crime before the witch hunter can strike again. But the more she investigates, the more she finds herself in an intricate web of lies, deceit and threats – a case even more complex and incredible than originally thought.

Book Launch: Tom Hulme - Belfastmen
2026-05-06 17:30 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us at No Alibis for the launch of Tom Hulme’s Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation, published by Cornell University Press.
Book Your Free Ticket Here
Belfastmen reconstructs the everyday experiences of queer men in a region infamous for its recent history of intolerance, violence, and religious homophobia to show how queer lives before the gay rights movement were not only possible but also rich, exciting, and fulfilling. Irish churches and governmental authorities found the topic of sex between men unmentionable and imagined such vice as a problem only found in decadent and degenerate societies abroad. Belfastmen shows how this tacit ignorance and public silence paradoxically enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation, or regulation.
Tom Hulme traces the intimate lives of men across time, space, and self-understanding: their meeting places, their sexual and romantic relationships, the scientific and social models of desire they used to define themselves, and the responses to them from families, neighborhoods, and the law. From Belfast’s industrial boom in the late nineteenth century to the social transformations accompanying WWII, Belfastmen reveals how homosexuality finally emerged as a recognized social problem in the 1950s. Only then did Northern Ireland start to transform into the expressively homophobic society of the more recent past.

John Connolly Book Launch - A River Red With Blood
2026-05-09 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
JOIN US FOR A BOOK LAUNCH SAT 9th MAY

TICKETS ARE FREE BUT BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL
The players call it The Game. There are just two rules: No Killing Close to Home. No Killing Outside the Game. But what happens when those rules get broken?When the drowned body of a troubled teenager is recovered from a river in Maine’s Kennebec Valley, and a young woman disappears from a small rural town, they draw the attention of the private investigator named Charlie Parker.
Now Parker will be forced to confront a band of men without morality and without loyalty, not even to one another, in a place where the very darkness is alive. Because something has emerged from the shadows, something very bad. And it wants revenge.

Paperback Launch: Chloe Michelle Howarth - Heap Earth Upon It
2026-05-13 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us at No Alibis to celebrate the launch of the paperback edition of Heap Earth Upon It, published by Verve Books, with author Chloe Michelle Howarth!
Book Your Free Ticket Here
January 1965. The orphaned O’Leary siblings – Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy – arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start. After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they’re taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.
But for one of the O’Learys, this new friendship sparks an intense attachment that makes the dynamic dangerous for all. It’s difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings… Crackling with suspense and intensity from start to finish, Heap Earth Upon It revisits the rural Ireland of Howarth’s critically acclaimed debut, delving into claustrophobic relationships and tangled identities, and leaving you wondering who to trust until the very last page.

Book Launch: Sue Divin - Runaway Road
2026-05-15 17:30 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join Northern Irish author, Sue Divin, to celebrate the launch of her third novel, Runaway Road. In conversation with Cathy Carson & Q&A.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***

Three life-changing minutes. Two siblings on the run. One choice that changes everything…
Adults and teens, writers and readers all welcome to this free book launch event. Light refreshments available from 5.30pm. Event starts 6pm.
Sue Divin is a Derry-based writer with Armagh roots. Her critically acclaimed novels are popular with teens and adults alike. Published in May 2026, Runaway Road (First Ink, Macmillan), is on the Irish Times ‘Best fiction of 2026’ list. Set in Northern Ireland and Donegal in 2023, it explores themes of family and belonging, identity, borders and youth justice. Sue’s début novel, Guard Your Heart, shortlisted in the prestigious Carnegie awards and her 2nd novel, Truth Be Told, is now included on the Ireland’s curriculum.
Ezra is sixteen. He’s no stranger to crossing the line, but this time it’s serious – and someone might be dead. To escape justice, he’ll have to cross another line: the Northern Irish border. But that means leaving behind the only thing that really matters. His little sister, Evie. Evie is nine and sees it differently. Why shouldn’t she go on the run with him too? Raised in care, the siblings are used to feeling invisible. Now they have to become invisible for real.
Book sales and signing will be available on the night, with kind support of No Alibis Bookshop.
Sue Divin will be in conversation with Cathy Carson.
Cathy Carson is the writer and performer of the award winning one woman show ‘ Becoming Marvellous’ which has been staged in venues throughout UK and Ireland and is published by Flight of the dragonfly press. Her writing focuses on human connection and condition and she has performed for radio, television, festivals, theatres and podcasts. She has been nominated for the pushcart prize for her performance poem ‘17’ and has been published in several anthologies.

Book event: The Rag Doll Contract by Dorothy Herson
2026-05-19 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Dorothy Herson to celebrate the publication of her novel, The Rag Doll Contract. Dorothy will be in conversation with Andrew Comiskey.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***
About The Rag Doll Contract:
Olivia has always believed that worth is earned through achievement-by any means necessary. Her ruthless ambition fuels her escape from the deadening familiarity of Bracknell. First, she conquers Oxford; then law school; and finally, the Only Circle-a shadowy network of the most elite corporate law firms in the world. The promise of power and greatness beckons, and Olivia surges forward, convinced she’s found what she’s always craved: wholeness, identity, and a self remade. But beneath the gleaming high-rises and immaculate offices of the Only Circle lies a brutal reality. Trainees work through endless nights on thankless deals that siphon their time, sanity, and identities. In-house gyms, sleeping tubes, and on-site clinics ensure employees never leave the building. Dull-eyed psychiatrists dole out prescriptions, keeping staff steady on little white pills and beta blockers as they grind through the twilight hours.
And in everyone lurks a need-visceral and stiff, more brutal than want-to be the best. To break from the bloodshot masses. To be the thing that is perfect and shiny and new. Under this carnivorous system of constant monitoring, appraisal, and scrutiny, Olivia tells herself, again and again, that she is willing to pay the price. Whatever the cost.
About the author:
Dorothy qualified as a lawyer at a Magic Circle firm before transitioning into writing and activism. As a journalist, her work has been featured in prominent publications, including the Independent, Marie Claire, National Geographic, Antics, and others. She is an editor and writer at Cambridge University Press, where she has contributed to leading mental health research. Dorothy has designed and edited impactful mental health policy work, which she successfully launched in Parliament. ​Dorothy is currently studying for a PhD in Literature and Medicine in Belfast.

Book Launch: Jamie Guiney - The Lightning
2026-05-28 18:30 - 20:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us at No Alibis to celebrate the release of The Lightning, published by Bluemoose Books, with author Jamie Guiney.
Book your free place here
Pre-order a copy of the book here
Wolf Island is in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean. An old lighthouse-keeper is at the end of his rope and he challenges the universe and his place in it. It is a tale of unexpected visitors, their personal histories and navigating the natural surroundings, whilst confronting the elemental rage of the sea.

Book Launch: NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY by John Ware
2026-06-18 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with John Ware to celebrate the launch of his book, Neither Confirm Nor Deny, published by Merrion Press. John will be in conversation with local journalist Sam Mc Bride.
Book Your Free Ticket Here
About the book:
‘The State is assassinating people.’
These were the chilling words said to have been sent to Tony Blair in 1999 in a damning note bluntly summarising one of the consequences of Britain’s decades-long intelligence war in Northern Ireland. State forces had crossed a line, guided by a secret review from 1980 that quietly rewired Britain’s war, placing intelligence gathering above the law.
What followed was the creation of a vast, covert agent-running machine that penetrated loyalist and republican organisations to unprecedented depths. Supporters claim the policy saved lives, helping pave the way for the Good Friday Agreement. Critics argue it also licensed murder, subverted justice and corrupted policing beyond repair.
Full of new and important revelations, this meticulously researched book is the inside story of the decades-long struggle to expose that truth – an attritional battle between detectives and lawyers on one side, and a powerful ‘securocracy’ on the other that was determined to protect its secrets. Focusing on two of the most notorious agents, Brian Nelson and Freddie Scappaticci, it reveals how the State has doggedly fought to control the narrative, silence scrutiny and preserve its legacy.

Book Launch: Living with Lynx by Jonny Hanson EVENT POSTPONED
2026-06-29 19:00 - 20:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL WE HAVE SADLY HAD TO POSTPONE THE BOOK LAUNCH LIVING WITH LYNX BY JONNY HANSON. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING

Join us at No Alibis Bookstore for the paperback launch of Dr Jonny Hanson’s Living with Lynx: Sharing Landscapes with Big Cats, Wolves and Bears, published by Pelagic Publishing.

This book investigates a vital and controversial question for conservation and rewilding in Britain and Ireland: could and should we learn to live with lynx, wolves and bears again? We travel back in time, around the world and into the future to explore this contested topic. The author delves deep into the human psyche, considering not only his own mixed feelings about large carnivore reintroductions but also why people have such polarised perspectives on top predators. He brings his unique combination of expertise on snow leopards – and their relationship with humans – along with his experience as a farmer to illustrate the discussion.
Along the way, we meet a cast of characters from across society, including farmers, rewilders and everyone in between. It becomes clear that coexisting with large carnivores is as much about sharing landscapes with each other as it is about sharing them with wildlife. The first book to tackle this subject in detail, based on more than 50 interviews from seven countries, Living with Lynx will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in the future of nature, farming and the countryside.
Personal, detailed, unflinching and engaging, it adds a great deal to this rapidly evolving debate.
