Really big news! Author copies of my book are here, and they're gorgeous. The colours! The chunkiness! The big glossy cat on the front! LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK is out in 2 weeks. Go pre-order it; it'll make a beautiful addition to your living space. I’m just saying…

This book rules, I need you all to buy it and read it (and ISABELLA NAGG while you're at it) so that Oliver's publisher(s) continues to offer him money for more books in the series, as it should by all rights/in a just world become a book-a-year-ish millennial's Discworldesque.

I just finished an ARC of The Devil and Mrs Gooch, and let me tell you: It’s INCREDIBLE. If you’re a fan of the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, this book is definitely going to be your jam. Longer review coming soon! #BookSky 💙📚

Darkshire's THE DEVIL AND MRS GOOCH revisits the world of Isabella Nagg, taking evil businesswoman Gooch to the city for a scheme involving kidnapped hobs, predatory rental practices, and a lovestruck Devil. Complete with copious footnotes and marginalia from a set of Household Gramarye. 🤩 #ewgc

In the hypnotic sophomore outing from Missouri Williams, a professor’s personal assistant gets drawn into a strange triangle with her boss and a male student. It’s a singular and arresting work. @MCDBooks buff.ly/DcCmbZP

The very brilliant @robinince.bsky.social has been saying some kind things about Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark 🐈‍⬛ Go on, treat yourself to a copy: lnk.to/LikeaCatLove... (glass of red not included, alas)

‘Anyway, if anyone out there is having similar dreams, just let me know! I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’m really just curious how many people out there have these dreams and how often you’re seeing the wandering masses who scream at you to “help us, help us, for God’s sake”?’

"What is it that makes some books stick in the mind while others drift into vague memory? One factor must be a unique, strong concept. And so it is with Eradication, or as I think of it, the one about a man on an island with 4,000 goats and a gun." Me on Jonathan Miles's springy, visceral novel:

And The New Dark Ages now has a cover! Bitter years of book reviewing have taught me not to get excited and that most books are fated to be ignored. But I am finding it hard to stay entirely jaded in this instance…

bookstore chains are hibernating in february, you must seize advantage of their weakness and raid their caves before they grow strong again in the summer months and begin hunting livestock near the mountain villages www.waterstones.com/book/isabell...

the UK paperback for Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, which some people have called "why" and "a fantasy book? I thought I raised a doctor or a lawyer" and "I only like the talking donkey, the rest is garbage" is out in paperback in june! and today it's 25% off (link ⬇️)

I’m taking my book on a little tour! Come and see me talk all things LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK. There'll be gossip, jokes and cat anecdotes. And once I'm through with those I'll start talking about the book. There’s a link for tickets in my bio. Hope to see you! 🐈‍⬛

How I became an agent, in praise of working for the best in the industry and what publishing could do better www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/free-ar...

The Sunday Times on the crisis in non-fiction - we lost 17million non-fiction book sales in just over half a decade - with some good contributions from Mark Richards and my colleague John Ash. A) we have been here before B) non-fiction needs to be the best it’s been www.thetimes.com/article/d1be...

This by @deathbybadger.bsky.social is great and the best part is, okay, Pratchetty Footnote Humor aside the actual plot is super grim, but the VILLAIN is this amazing Varrick-esque "shows up in every episode with a different get-rich-quick scheme" elven con artist and she's fantastic and I love her.

Hooting and snorting my way through THE DEVIL AND MRS GOOCH by @deathbybadger.bsky.social (second in the "Household Gramarye" series). The footnotes! The ARC courtesy of @wwnortonlibrary.bsky.social was just what I needed. #ewgc

If you haven't read it yet, get Isabella Nagg And The Pot Of Basil by @deathbybadger.bsky.social right now and get on with it. A hilarious and heartfelt book about power, loss and the dangers of unbridled capitalism, among many other things (like the dangers of garden gnomes)

Fonts in conversation. A new series (probably 1 of 1).

Green Dot author Madeleine Gray: ‘Chosen family is big in the queer community’

Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray review – friends, lovers or something in between?

In Opinion “We definitely have an attention problem, but it’s not just a function of the digital technology that pings and beeps and flashes and nudges us ever closer to despair,” write D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt. “It starts with the way we think about attention.”

Well here’s something: the BBC has included LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK in a round-up of the must-reads of 2026. I’m sandwiched between Liza Minnelli and Cher - a big camp old Merry Christmas to me! ✨

Damn, Missouri Wiliams' The Vivisectors is great so far. Out in May.

My magnum opus - a unified field theory of why the post-literate society spells disaster for civilisation as we know it jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-o...

Isabella Nagg spotted at a bookstore in Millerton: "a messed up fairy tale that's kind of like if Roald Dahl and Terry Pratchett went through a washing machine and the colours all ran" 🧐 maybe this person should be the writer

woof. and that's an (extremely ratty) finished book draft. now all I have to do is write it again but better before I can even start thinking about selling it 🫩

Absolutely loved @deathbybadger.bsky.social's debut novel, Isabella Nagg & the Pot of Basil. I guess the best desc of it rn is cosy fantasy? In that there's a cottage and a village and wizardry? But it's cosy f in the same way that Pratchett is high f. All the elements, there but it's much more.

I’m a little late to this but goodness it’s the most Terry Pratchett thing I’ve read since Sir Terry passed away. An absolute joy, and not a moment too soon.

The 12 best books of the year so far - chosen by the BBC Happy to see Catherine Airey’s CONFESSIONS & Florence Knapp’s THE NAMES www.bbc.co.uk/culture/arti... @john-ash.bsky.social @florenceknapp.bsky.social

today is the UK release day of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil ✨🌱 and while this is a big moment for me I really do have to insist that you do NOT eat the goblin fruit. don't do it. not even once. no fruit for you, it's a terrible idea, truly. hodderscape.co.uk/products/isa...

got my hands on the UK edition of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil and. yea. okay. this worked. (available over here on the 19th June. buy the shiny thing.)

this is one of those reviews you put on a wall and when someone visits you say "oh that old thing yes I suppose it was rather nice" as you drink in their delicious envy

Oliver Darkshire's Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil is a delightful, Pratchett-esque story brimming with footnotes and satire, and inspired by one character in Boccaccio’s The Decameron. Read @vfarmstrong.com's review! reactormag.com/book-review-...

Well that was a *mad week*. Really looking forward to our book launching on thursday!! (no book launch though because I'm a wet blanket)

something very surreal, or maybe disturbingly tangible, about holding finished copies of your first novel. it glitters, like fool's gold. i have wanted this for a very, very long time. I did good. [Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil is out in the US on May 13th — wwnorton.com/books/978132... ]

The news is out! We are so excited to see Green Dot by Madeleine Gray shortlisted for Book of the Year in the #BritishBookAwards Debut Fiction category 🟢 Huge congratulations to all the selected authors! #Nibbies #GreenDot #wnbooks @thebookseller.com

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by @deathbybadger.bsky.social - highly recommended and review coming soon to the @britfantasysoc.bsky.social I think my Greton would fit in very well with the world Oliver's created, and I think people in need of a little cosy are going to love it.

“People are just like books—full of hidden meanings that need to be unearthed by an attentive reader.” -THE BOYHOOD OF CAIN 🩵 Michael Amherst's tender and glistening debut is finally on shelves today! Start reading: bit.ly/4ibQAOr #books #debutbooks #literaryfiction #comingofage

"With The Boyhood of Cain, a star is born." 📖 ⭐ Me on Michael Amherst's debut novel of exceptional poise and confidence.👇 It has the surface calmness, inner turbulence, understated emotion and muted wit of JM Coetzee, and the most affecting ending I've read in ages.

'A literary star is born.' The Times A rave review for Michael Amherst's 'brilliant' debut novel, The Boyhood of Cain - 'the most affecting, satisfying finish to a novel I’ve read in a long time.' Out next week. thetimes.com/culture/books/article/boyhood-cain-michael-amherst-review-wlh70dv55

my brilliant pal Michael Amherst's debut THE CHILDHOOD OF CAIN, out Thurs @faberbooks.bsky.social, has received a *wonderful* @thetimes.com review from John Self. 'A literary star is born' 'dazzling' 'Amherst has Coetzee’s surface calmness, inner turbulence, understated emotion and muted wit'

looks like we have both covers for ISABELLA NAGG AND THE POT OF BASIL [May 25], US cover (left) and UK cover (right). apparently americans like cats and the british like goblins? please lament that the cover you want is not in your area, and preorder so I don't look like jimmy no-mates (links below)

Can I just reiterate how lovely @deathbybadger.bsky.social's ONCE UPON A TOME is? Anyone involved in collecting, collections, books, or places inhabited by those long since gone will find it a joy. Museum folks, it resonated all too well 😂

Kevin Power on Confessions by Catherine Airey: A remarkably confident, complex and nuanced debut novel - This multigenerational, transatlantic family saga starts with 9/11 and swerves back in time to Donegal in the 1970s www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

I interviewed the debut novelist Catherine Airey for today's @irishtimes.com. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

I have a proof copy of my first novel and I'm so chuffed, now I just need to blackmail famous people into saying nice things, sell a sensible million copies, easy peasy, realistic goals - ISABELLA NAGG AND THE POT OF BASIL is out in May (calliope for scale)

‘I’ve just been blown away by the best novel in years’ Helen Davies, The Sunday Times, on THE NAMES by Florence Knapp (@florenceknapp.bsky.social) -out in May

We have some exceptional novels, including outstanding debuts, coming out in 2025. First up Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett and Confessions by Catherine Airey (@john-ash.bsky.social) as singled out by the @financialtimes.com