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Imprint: Bedford Square Publishers
Category: Adult & contemporary romance, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
‘Funny and atmospheric, conjures the sultry, seedy charm of Camden in the 1980s’ Tessa Hadley
A picaresque 1980s bookshop romance, rife with music and mayhem, by the acclaimed biographer and author of Heatwave.
In the summer of 1982, the year of the Falklands War, Ellen Moore arrives in Camden Town determined to shake off the past. She starts a job at Leviathan Books, where the boss wanders around in Aleister Crowley’s old dressing gown and conducts a secret upstairs salon.
Soon she’s settled into a rackety new life, living in a local squat with a bunch of post-punks and singing in a synth-pop group with bold ambitions – but will her plans be derailed by a beautiful young junkie, his malevolent older lover and a book with seeming magical properties that’s been stolen from her sinister boss at Leviathan?
•THE HOOK: Summer 1982, Camden Town. A young woman reinventing herself works at an occult bookshop where the boss wears Aleister Crowley’s old dressing gown, lives in a post-punk squat, sings in a synth-pop band and gets tangled up with a stolen, possibly magical book.
• BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS: Bookshop novels are a perennial bestselling category. This is a darker, funnier take, full of music and mayhem.
• ACCLAIMED AUTHOR: John L. Williams is a biographer, novelist (Heatwave), the Mail on Sunday’s crime fiction reviewer and co-founder of the Laugharne Weekend festival. ‘Funny and atmospheric, conjures the sultry, seedy charm of Camden in the 1980s’ Tessa Hadley.
• 1980s NOSTALGIA: Post-punk London, the Falklands War summer and a band with big ambitions, for readers who loved Daisy Jones & The Six.
• FOR FANS OF: Donna Tartt, Rachel Kushner and Taylor Jenkins Reid.”
RRP: £10.99
ISBN: 9781835016268
Published: January 28, 2027
Extent: 224 pages
RRP: £6.99
ISBN: 9781835016275
Published: January 28, 2027
‘The Booksellers of Camden Lock inhabits the magical landscape of a London lost to the Internet Age, when knowledge – about love, music, books, life and everything – was a quest that would send you down twisty alleyways off Kensington Church Street, to anarcho-punk squats in Ladbroke Grove and through the labyrinth of stalls and shops along Camden High Street in search of enlightenment. John Williams casts a fresh enchantment from those Eighties leylines, a fairytale to rival those of his fellow Camden habitues, The Pogues’ Cathi Unsworth
‘Funny and atmospheric, conjures the sultry seedy charm of Camden in the 1980s’ Tessa Hadley
'Funny and atmospheric, conjures the sultry, seedy charm of Camden in the 1980s' Tessa Hadley
A picaresque 1980s bookshop romance, rife with music and mayhem, by the acclaimed biographer and author of Heatwave.
In the summer of 1982, the year of the Falklands War, Ellen Moore arrives in Camden Town determined to shake off the past. She starts a job at Leviathan Books, where the boss wanders around in Aleister Crowley's old dressing gown and conducts a secret upstairs salon.
Soon she's settled into a rackety new life, living in a local squat with a bunch of post-punks and singing in a synth-pop group with bold ambitions – but will her plans be derailed by a beautiful young junkie, his malevolent older lover and a book with seeming magical properties that's been stolen from her sinister boss at Leviathan?
•THE HOOK: Summer 1982, Camden Town. A young woman reinventing herself works at an occult bookshop where the boss wears Aleister Crowley's old dressing gown, lives in a post-punk squat, sings in a synth-pop band and gets tangled up with a stolen, possibly magical book.
• BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS: Bookshop novels are a perennial bestselling category. This is a darker, funnier take, full of music and mayhem.
• ACCLAIMED AUTHOR: John L. Williams is a biographer, novelist (Heatwave), the Mail on Sunday's crime fiction reviewer and co-founder of the Laugharne Weekend festival. 'Funny and atmospheric, conjures the sultry, seedy charm of Camden in the 1980s' Tessa Hadley.
• 1980s NOSTALGIA: Post-punk London, the Falklands War summer and a band with big ambitions, for readers who loved Daisy Jones & The Six.
• FOR FANS OF: Donna Tartt, Rachel Kushner and Taylor Jenkins Reid."
"The Booksellers of Camden Lock" was written by John L. Williams.
