The signing pen barely made it back into the drawer in June. Authors arrived with gothic horror, family secrets, Irish history, rebellious twins, political arguments, loaf cakes and enough psychological suspense to make us suspicious of anyone lingering near the Crime Fiction table.

June was one of those months when Chapters felt particularly Chapters-ish.

The Pride flags were flying, the Dublin Literary Award occupied much of the front window and the shop was already busy with Independent Bookshop Week, Yeats' Birthday, Bloomsday, our first instore quiz, a Redemption of Rose and everything else we had decided to squeeze into June. Naturally, we also welcomed a remarkable number of authors!

Some came for organised signings, others called in while passing, and several were gently ambushed before they could leave and asked to sign everything within reach.

The resulting collection is wonderfully eclectic. There are novels about family, memory and home; history that makes the past feel dangerously close; vampires planning an escape to the moon; musicians discovering that old guilt has a very long half-life; and two competitive twins arguing about which of them is tallest.

Here is what June brought to Parnell Street.

Secrets, lies and people making very poor decisions

Amanda Geard visited with The Glass Key, her new sweeping mystery, and signed copies alongside some of her earlier novels. It begins with a wartime letter and takes Maggie to Norway, where she begins uncovering the intertwined stories of four women during the German occupation. There are family secrets, buried histories and beautiful landscapes concealing things they have no business concealing.

Andrea Morstabilini brought us A Blood as Bright as the Moon, which combines queer gothic horror, secret vampire clans and a plan to escape to the moon. Ambrose and his family are being hunted by the Royal Diurnal Society, because apparently ordinary family tension was insufficient and what everyone really needed was immortality, persecution and sinister scientific societies.

Gill Perdue called in with All of Them Lied, a standalone psychological thriller that starts with a fall, a coma and missing memories. Thea survives, but she cannot remember what happened, and everyone around her seems to have a slightly different account. This is exactly the sort of book that makes you decide you would be much safer trusting absolutely nobody.

Mary Watson's The Lover also begins with an encounter that goes catastrophically wrong. A woman meets a man, feels an immediate connection and later wakes beside his murdered body. Everyone thinks she killed him. She knows she did not but proving that means discovering who he really was and why someone wanted him dead. A useful reminder that staying home with a book remains an excellent romantic strategy.

Families, old houses and the long reach of the past

Faith Hogan returned with The Sisters of Hope Square. Sisters Blythe and Rae are drawn back to Pin Hill Island and the family hotel, where an old disappointment has never been properly resolved and the future of their inheritance is at stake. Faith writes wonderfully about families who love one another, exasperate one another and know exactly where every emotional body is buried.

Helen Dwyer brought The Long Way Home, the story of Fiona, whose teenage pregnancy leads to the forced adoption of her daughter and a life shaped by grief, secrecy and exile. Years later, her return to Dublin brings the past painfully close. It is a novel about the damage caused when shame is imposed on women, and about whether truth and forgiveness can still be found after decades of silence.

Edie May Hand came in with her debut novel, Dirtpickers. Set in an Idaho mining community, it moves between 1981 and the events five years earlier that changed everything. It is a story of trauma, love, violence and found family, with characters whose lives have been shaped by a place that can be both fiercely protective and brutally unforgiving. Dirtpickers was a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair in 2024, and it is wonderful to see it now in readers' hands.

Mary O'Donnell visited with Sweep the Cobwebs Off the Sky. At Kilnavarn House, two sisters care for their infirm mother while memory, resentment and old family stories move through the rooms with them. Mary's novel is attentive to ageing, place and the complicated intimacy of families, particularly the histories that remain present even when nobody is speaking about them.

Jamie Guiney came in with The Lightning, his strange, spare new novel set around a lighthouse on remote Wolf Island. I had just finished Muckle Flugga, another book about isolation, ageing, visitors and life at the edge of the sea, and was struck again by the sheer oddness of fiction: give two writers some similar ingredients and they will build entirely different universes. It is a completely distinctive novel, elemental and humane, and the photograph of Jamie signing with his young daughter watching may be one of our favourites from the month.

Kathryn Stockett joined us to sign The Calamity Club, her first novel since The Help. Set in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933, it follows eleven-year-old orphan Meg and a group of women who have been dismissed, underestimated or left with very few respectable options. Friendship and solidarity become forms of survival, with plenty of wit and trouble along the way.

Nuala O'Connor stopped by with Nora, her vivid reimagining of the life of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce. It places Nora firmly at the centre of her own story, as lover, mother, survivor and creative force, rather than leaving her at the edge of somebody else's legend. We are always delighted to see Nuala, particularly when she arrives during a month in which Dublin becomes briefly convinced that everyone has read Ulysses.

History, politics and the people inside the big events

Derek Molyneux brought in Many of Our Best Lie There: Dublin, July 1922–May 1923, written with Darren Kelly. The sixth and final volume in their series on revolutionary Dublin takes readers into the Irish Civil War, when former comrades turned their guns on one another and the ideals of revolution gave way to executions, prison escapes, urban warfare and lasting psychological scars. It is history with people still inside it, frightened, compromised and trying to survive.

Rory Carroll signed A Rebel and a Traitor, the intertwined story of Roger Casement and British intelligence chief Reginald “Blinker” Hall. One was an Irish revolutionary seeking German support, the other the man determined to stop him. Rory turns espionage, intercepted messages, political conviction and betrayal into history that moves with the pace of a thriller.

Fintan Drury visited with Genocide: Sponsoring the Destruction of Palestine, an urgent work of political non-fiction confronting responsibility, power and the destruction of Palestinian life. Bookshops must make room for difficult arguments and serious examinations of the world in which we are living, and this is a book written to provoke thought, discussion and, inevitably, disagreement.

Donal Casey brought us Reflections on a Golden Ball, part memoir, part reflection on leadership, opportunity and luck. Moving from Athy through a remarkable business career to his work with Rory McIlroy, Donal considers success, self-belief, wealth, sport and Ireland's transformation, while returning to the important distinction between being lucky and recognising that you have been lucky.

Music, baking and books for younger readers

Patrick Freyne arrived with Experts in a Dying Field, his first novel. The Heathens once believed they were perhaps the thousandth-best band in the world, which is still considerably better than most bands formed in somebody's kitchen. After a catastrophic tour van crash, the survivors go their separate ways. Twenty years later, strange events in Dublin bring them back together. It is funny, sad and wonderfully observant about music, friendship, grief and the lies people tell themselves in order to keep moving. Mick read it in two evenings, after a monstrous commute, which is usually a fairly reliable sign that a book has got hold of him.

Shane Smith signed Loaf Tin Bakes, a book dedicated to the most dependable piece of equipment in many kitchens. These are accessible, achievable recipes from an Irish pastry chef who understands that people want beautiful baking without first completing a professional qualification or buying seventeen specialist tins. Sweet and savoury, impressive without being impossible, and dangerous to browse while hungry – also, they seem foolproof as I've made Lemon Cake and something else I can't remember at the moment from it and they were tasty and didn't look terrible … something I don't manage often in baking!

The Look North celebration brought a burst of brilliant Northern Irish teen fiction into the shop. The four featured novels cover very different territory: Stephen Daly's supernatural The Last Death Poet, Sue Divin's contemporary Runaway Road, Jenny Ireland's South of France romance French Kisses, and Kelly McCaughrain's speculative Just Another Dead Boy. The four books are completely different, which is precisely the point. Teen fiction should be allowed the same range, strangeness and ambition as books written for adults. A young teenager and a seventeen-year-old are not the same reader, and neither should be offered a vague shelf of worthy books.

Jarvis called in with Rafi and Rita, illustrated by Chris Judge. The twins are almost exactly alike, except that both are entirely convinced they are the tallest. Their argument escalates through moons, dinosaurs and an extremely annoying song before reaching a very funny and surprisingly charming conclusion. Anyone who has ever listened to siblings argue over something objectively unprovable will recognise the scholarship behind this book.

Finally, Yvonne Fleming brought along The Weatherbies, including adventures in both English and Irish. Illustrated by James Salenga, the books introduce young children to the weather, teamwork and caring for the planet through bright characters such as Sammy Sun and Tomas Toirneach. The enormous smiling weather character who accompanied Yvonne into the photograph was, it must be said, exceptionally well behaved in the Crime Fiction section.

Come in and see what they left behind

One of the great pleasures of an independent bookshop is that writers do not remain distant names printed on covers. They walk through the doors, talk to booksellers and readers, sign a pile of books, laugh at our displays and occasionally find themselves standing beneath an artificial blossom tree while someone takes seventeen photographs.

June gave us an extraordinary cross-section of writing: commercial fiction and literary debuts, history and politics, gothic horror and psychological suspense, teen novels, picture books, music, memoir and cake.

The signing pen now requires a small holiday.

Shop All Signed Books – June 2026