No Alibis Bookstore

Launch & In Conversation Event: The Cloud Kingdom by Máire Zepf & Andrew Whitson
2025-10-25 17:30 - 18:30 (Europe/London) | 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
