Book Launch: Liz Nugent - The Truth About Ruby Cooper
2026-03-24 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/London) | 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.

PLEASE BOOK YOUR FREE PLACE HERE
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.

Book Launch: Sheila Armstrong - The Red Mouth
2026-06-30 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 Red Mouth by Sheila Armstrong, published by Bloomsbury.
Book your free ticket here!
Pre-order your copy of the book here!
When a dog finds a strange, alien antler in a restored bog, the owner’s first thought is to keep it for himself. But when he realises the value of his find, he is drawn back to the rich peat to keep searching. It is not one stag skeleton that is buried there, but dozens – an ancient dying ground of the Great Irish Elk.
Other things have surfaced from the bog: prehistoric settlements, bronze cauldrons, ancient butter, iron weapons – and the mutilated body of a two-thousand-year-old female. Fifty years ago, a young archaeologist named her Belroe Woman, and dedicated his life to telling the story of her sacrificial death. While state and public treat the bog body as a national treasure, others must reckon with its otherworldly influence over their lives: the peat-cutter who first unearthed her and carries this discovery like a curse; the archaeologist’s daughter who grows up in the shadow of the bog’s strange magnetism; and the young environmental scientist whose work draws her back to where it all began.
Haunting and lyrical, The Red Mouth – an béal rua – is the story of two discoveries and the four strangers who become intertwined in their wake. The deep time of the bog is both mystical and sinister: those bound to it must decide what to bury – and what to unearth.

BOOK LAUNCH - CTRL: Essays on Video Games
2026-07-01 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop to celebrate the launch of CTRL, a collection of essays on video games edited by Dean Fee and published by Lilliput Press. Dean and Stephen Sexton, a contributor to the collection, will be in conversation with local writer Dara McWade.
***BOOK YOUR FREE TICKET HERE***

In CTRL, writers turn their focus to one of the most influential – and persistently misunderstood – art forms of the modern era. Through memoir, criticism, and narrative exploration, these essays chart the ways video games intersect with memory, identity, imagination, and the complicated business of being human.
Here, games become ciphers for joy and escape, but also for pain, addiction, burnout and longing. They emerge as places where we grow up, fall apart, find solace, test our limits, and rewrite ourselves. The essays in this collection explore how virtual landscapes imprint on real ones, how play becomes a way of thinking and how game worlds both mirror and distort the worlds we inhabit.
Ranging from pixelated nostalgia to sprawling open worlds, CTRL interrogates gaming’s contradictions – its artistry and excesses, its transformative potential and its shadows. Alongside these personal narratives lie broader questions: Where does this medium go next? Can it retain its creative integrity amid rapid technological shifts and the pressures of capital? What does it mean to call games art when they so often outgrow the boundaries we try to place around them?
Insightful, intimate, and alive with curiosity, CTRL captures the emotional and cultural force of video games, and the stories we carry with us when we put the controller down.
Featuring Essays By:
Sheila Armstrong
Rob Doyle
Joe Dunthorne
Donal Fullam
Úna-Minh Kavanagh
Róisín Kiberd
Anna Loughran
Darragh McCausland
Lisa McInerney
John Patrick McHugh
Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan
Brenda Romero
Stephen Sexton
Paul Whyte
Games featured include:
Final Fantasy IX
Fallout: New Vegas
Pokémon
Doom
Tomb Raider
Disco Elysium
The Stanley Parable
Wanderstop
Urban Chaos
The Elder Scrolls
The Witcher
Lemmings
Star Wars
Grim Fandango
Monkey Island 2
Discworld
Bioshock
Hotline Miami
Red Dead Redemption

BOOK LAUNCH: Troubled Waters - POSTPONED NEW DATE TO BE CONFIRMED
2026-07-02 18:00 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
BOOK LAUNCH POSTPONED
NEW DATE TO BE CONFIRMED
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Tommy Greene to celebrate the launch of his new book, Troubled Waters : How Lough Neagh Is Being Destroyed by Corporate Greed and Political Neglect. Tommy will be in conversation with local journalist Sam McBride.

About the book:
In the summer of 2023, the people of the UK and Ireland were stunned when a foul-smelling green algae bloom blanketed the surface of Lough Neagh – the largest freshwater body on these islands – suffocating aquatic life and signalling an unprecedented environmental disaster.
Troubled Waters is a damning exposé, which uncovers the shocking destruction of the lough, source of almost half of Northern Ireland’s drinking water and a place steeped in historical and cultural significance. Award-winning journalist Tommy Greene delves deep into a gripping tale of greed, corruption, ineptitude and environmental catastrophe that has unfolded in plain sight against a backdrop of governmental instability and systematic cover-ups.
With unrivalled access to the story, Greene exposes the fierce battle that will determine the future of this once-thriving ecosystem which now teeters on the brink of ecological collapse.

Poetry launch: Milk & Moon-water - Milena Williamson
2026-07-23 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Milena Williamson to celebrate the launch of her new pamphlet, Milk & Moon-water, published by the Emma Press.
***Book your free ticket here***

A Sudden Stitch. Unfruitful Land. A Fever. In Milk & Moon-water, Milena Williamson uncovers 11 Old English metrical charms – ancient incantations spoken to ward off harm – creatively translating them into magical and medicinal spells for the modern reader. Alongside each reimagining is an original charm poem, a remixed and new telling of an old text. Covering the climate crisis, illness, ageing and fertility, this collection of charms ranges from the incantatory to the unhinged, and reengages with the ancient practice of looking to the land and the body for answers to life’s new and persisting questions.

Book Launch: One of Us is Guilty by Steve Cavanagh
2026-08-07 18:30 - 20:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us at No Alibis Bookstore for the launch of Steve Cavanagh’s newest thriller One of Us is Guilty, published by Headline.
Reserve your free place here.
Pre-order your copy of the book here.
A PERFECT COUPLE. BUT ONE OF THEM IS A KILLER. WHICH ONE?
Patrick Vanderpool, son of a billionaire media mogul, is destined for power. But the affair he’s having could ruin everything.
Vanessa Vanderpool, married to one of America’s most influential men, has her own ambitions. But the affair he’s having could ruin everything. When the other woman is found brutally murdered, there are only two suspects…
One of them is guilty. But which one? Conman turned defence lawyer Eddie Flynn must risk his life to find out… The Sunday Times Top Five bestseller returns with a brand new thriller featuring the unforgettable Eddie Flynn.

Book Launch: The Killer's Mark by M. W. Craven
2026-08-22 12:00 - 14:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us at No Alibis for the launch of The Killer’s Mark by M. W. Craven, published by Constable.
Book your free ticket here
Pre-order the book here
About the book:
A MONSTER. A MOTHER. A MURDER?
When Vice Admiral Boyer, RN (retd) died without leaving a will, his estranged daughter inherited his – not inconsiderable – estate.
Called home to sort through his belongings, she found an AegisBox – a tamper proof safe within a safe designed to self-destruct if anyone without the code attempts to open it. Unable to walk away without the truth, she uncovered something so horrifying it launched the biggest investigation in the National Crime Agency’s history. Five years later, Washington Poe is unwittingly, and unwillingly, sucked into its gravity…
Finally able to escape the authority they railed against, Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw are enjoying their new jobs as private detectives or – as the sign on their door says – ‘Gumshoes for Hire’. When a teenage girl walks into their office, looking for the mother she long believed to be dead, they agree to take the case. As Poe and Tilly investigate the girl’s claims, they find themselves drawn into a murky world of trafficking, pornography and prostitution.
Will they be able to help the girl find her mother, or will the dark forces at work, who will stop at nothing to protect themselves, get there first…

Damian Smyth Folly Lane Book Launch
2026-09-09 18:00 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us on 9th September at 6pm to celebrate the publication of
Folly Lane by Damian Smyth
This is a free event.
Book your space here
Folly Lane – a novel, is a biographic novel skilfully weaving its weft of narratives and private text, all drawn from the public world amongst the warp of a modern world in flux, tethered by histories of order chaos and failure. The novel reaches from imperial Rome to 21st century Ireland.
Folly Lane, a place in Downpatrick, a ‘street’, is a cul-de-sac, a pathway, a side road – never a thoroughfare, but a mis-step- so maybe a metaphor , a fiction.
Nothing there is owned, not even ‘autobiography’ where “I” is a population of multiple selves, every ampersand reveals another diorama and even formulaic utterances – prayers, invocations, testimonies, mission statements, visions, strategies reveal mesmerising, ‘enchanting’ patterns of expression.

Memorable and telling – moreover, useful.

Within this fiction of self we discover stories, narratives, messages and lessons underpinned by irony, hyperbole and fable in a miasma of satire,
Lord knows, even if we don’t look for one, there is inevitably a moral at work…

Book Launch: Sensation by Colin Graham
2026-09-23 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in the bookshop for an event with Colin Graham to celebrate the launch of Sensation, published by PVA Books.
Book your free ticket here.

About the book:
A train journey prompts a flow of memories – a perfect childhood garden, a father obsessed with catching animals, the background noise of the Troubles – sensations retold, felt again at second hand. Weaving through early-morning milk runs, the effects of redundancy, intense evangelical meetings, dressing up, and the desire for literary enlightenment, these essays contemplate how our experiences make us who we are.
Rooted in his recollections of growing up in 1980s Belfast, Colin Graham traces connections across his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and tells the story of his fractured relationship with his father. In a vivid series of reconstructions, Sensation examines the entangled elements of a life.
Colin Graham’s books include Ideologies of Epic, Deconstructing Ireland, and (as @BorderIrish) I am the Border, So I am. His book Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography won the Michael J. Durkan Prize and was an Observer Photography Book of the Month. His fiction and memoir-essays have appeared in the Dublin Review, the Edinburgh Review,and elsewhere, and he was formerly editor of the Irish Review. Graham presents the My Identity podcast for ARINS and the Royal Irish Academy, and farms sheep in the Dublin mountains. He is Professor of English at Maynooth University.
‘Poised, elegant, textured, and deeply insightful. The author’s inner life, with all its private intimacies and anguishes, is conveyed with a prose style that is both graceful and contained’ * Niamh Campbell
‘An erudite and deeply humane study of class, work, faith, nature, art, and, most of all, of the acutely moving estrangement of father and son. These supremely articulate and evocative essays are as alert to the processes of memory as they are to the moments, people, and places they examine. Here is the sensate world, from fish and birds to Shostakovich and sheep farming, given with tenderness and in luminous detail’ * Stephen Sexton’Composed with precision and clarity, Colin Graham’s pristine sentences set the past glimmering vividly. A transporting, unforgettable experience’ * Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Book Launch: Stations - Louise Kennedy
2026-09-24 19:00 - 20:00 | Great Hall, QUB, Great Hall, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, United Kingdom
We are delighted to be selling books at the launch of Louise Kennedy’s second novel, Stations. The event will take place in the Great Hall at Queen’s University Belfast at 7pm on Thursday 24th September. To RSVP please e-mail cormac.kinsella@gmail.com
About Stations:
Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982. Brilliant, sharp-tongued and born to slip through the cracks, Red’s reputation for trouble precedes him – but Róisín finds herself swept up in his storm, and soon their connection deepens. When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town to start a new life in England.
As the years pass, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together. When Róisín arrives in London, the promise of freedom, of reinvention, and of finding her dear friend calls. But searching for Red leads Róisín to a truth darker than she could have imagined: when you go looking for someone you may uncover parts of yourself along the way that you’d rather stayed buried.
And Red – bright, beautiful Red – might not want to be found at all. Stations is a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.

Book Launch: No Vacancy by Jan Carson
2026-09-29 17:30 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us on Tuesday 29th September at No Alibis Bookstore to launch Jan Carson’s new collection No Vacancy, published by No Alibis Press.
Reserve your free place here
About the book:
Where do touring writers go when all the books have been signed and the crowd has dispersed? To an extraordinary place of haunted pools and sacred shower curtains, a one-eyed man in a funeral suit and a foyer of powdery-scented grandmothers. The hotel rooms in this new collection of micro-fiction by Jan Carson are, like art, ‘neither here nor concretely there’. Carson opens doors to the uncanny with humour tuned keenly to the strange and surreal, but the reader is left with a profound sense of familiarity at the human condition so tenderly revealed.
Preorder a copy here

Paperback Launch: One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Omar El Akkad in Conversation with Michael Magee
2026-09-30 20:00 - 21:30 | Mandela Hall. Queens University Belfast, Mandela Hall .77 University Road, Belfast, Antrim, BT7 1NF, United Kingdom
Join us at the Mandela Hall for the launch of the paperback edition of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This with author Omar El Akkad, who will be in conversation with Michael Magee. This is a ticketed event, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to MAP: Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Buy your ticket here on TicketSource.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. This is a book for those that have tired of moral emptiness. This is a book for everyone who wants something better.
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Oregon Book Award. His books have been translated into 13 languages.
Michael Magee is a graduate of the creative writing PhD programme at Queen’s University, Belfast. His writing has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, The Lifeboat and The 32: The Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices. Close to Home is his first novel. It was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2023 and won the Rooney Prize for Literature 2023.

Oliver Jeffers - The World of Oliver Jeffers Book Tour 2026
2026-12-20 12:00 - 14:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Oliver Jeffers – The World of Oliver Jeffers Book Tour 2026
FREE TICKETS HERE
This is a free event but booking is essential
The World of Oliver Jeffers Tour – Public signing
Join us in-store as we have the wonderful Oliver Jeffers here signing copies of his brand new children’s book A Day Off School Illustrated by Kevin Waldron and the new paperback edition of
There’s a Ghost in This House.
A free art print will be gifted with either book bought. Additional publishing by Oliver will also be available to buy on the day.
A Day Off School tells the story of Herbie, who stays home from school when he has the sniffles. At first, Herbie is delighted to have a day all to himself. A day to play Space Blasters uninterrupted, do some painting and to read his book in bed! But, by lunchtime, Herbie has done everything on his list and soon – despite his best efforts – his thoughts turn to school. What if something really fun is happening? Like an extra playtime or a dog loose in the corridors? What if Herbie is missing out?
There’s a Ghost in This House brings a unique and disarmingly witty take on the traditional ghost book that will go far beyond Halloween. Hello, come in.
Maybe you can help me? A young girl lives in a haunted house, but has never seen a ghost. Are they white with holes for eyes? Are they hard to see? She’d love to know! Step inside and turn the pages to help her on an entertaining ghost hunt, from behind the sofa, right up to the attic. With lots of friendly ghost surprises and incredible mixed media illustrations, this unique and funny book will entertain young readers over and over again!
