Category: New Releases

This section highlights a selection of new book releases.

Our Best-Selling Books 0f 2013

Well, the results are in for our top 25 best-selling books of 2013, so start humming the chart run-down music (you know the one, from Radio One back in the day) and see how many of these you’ve read (or may want to come and buy)…

  1. Cromford Revisited (Doreen Buxton & Christopher Charlton, £18)
  2. Buddhist Boot Camp (Timber Hawkeye, £7.99)
  3. Cromford Guide (Freda Bayles, £3.99)
  4. Already Dead (Stephen Booth, £17.99)
  5. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Robert MacFarlane, £9.99)
  6. Lattice Labyrinth Tessellations (David Mitchell, £7.95)
  7. Dead and Buried (Stephen Booth, £6.99)
  8. Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel, £9.99)
  9. Street Cat Named Bob (James Bowen, £7.99)
  10. The Fault in Our Stars (John Green, £7.99)
  11. Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Graham Joyce, £7.99)
  12. Field Barns of the Peak District (Sheila Hine, £16.95)
  13. The Reason I Jump (Naoki Higashida, £12.99)
  14. Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel, £9.99)
  15. Matlock and Matlock Bath Through Time (Alan Roberts, £14.99)
  16. Illustrated Life (Danny Gregory, £16.99)
  17. Art of Clean Up (Ursus Wehrli, £9.99)
  18. First Book of Nature (Nichola Davies, £14.99)
  19. BBC Proms Guide 2013 (£6.50)
  20. Print Workshop (Christine Schmidt, £14.99)
  21. George Orwell: English Rebel (Robert Colls, £25)
  22. Flight Behaviour (Barbara Kingsolver, £7.99)
  23. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, £6.99)
  24. Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson, £8.99)
  25. Lighthouse (Alison Moore, £8.99)
This list excludes multiple copies ordered by institutions (such as schools or councils) and doesn’t include gift items or maps.
Several of the books in the top ten were helped by book-signing events and/or were well publicised by us.  A couple (Cromford Revisited and Lattice Labyrinth Tessellations) were only published a month or so ago and have still sold an incredible 84 and 30 copies respectively.  Dave’s book (Tessellations) should continue to sell well this year (with enough encouragement and cajoling). It’s also interesting to note that a number of Art books – not traditionally multi-selling titles, have made it onto the list – all of which are given prominence on the display table in the Art Room (Illustrated Life, Art of Clean Up, Print Workshop, First Book of Nature), selling almost 60 copies between them.
It’s great to see local authors (David Mitchell, Stephen Booth, Alison Moore, Sheila Hine, Alan Roberts, (the late) Freda Bayles, Doreen Buxton & Christopher Charlton and Graham Joyce) dominating the list, despite competition from big names such as Hilary Mantel and (the film-inspired resurgence of) F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Many of the titles just outside this top 25 include some of the classic children’s books.  Items on sale in our Gift Room sold incredibly well, with five of the ‘Poems Instead of Cards’ range outselling all of the books from 11-25 in the list, and our Parkwood Pottery range continues to sell incredibly well.
Of course, this is only a snapshot of what’s been POPULAR at Scarthin Books over the past year – this doesn’t make them more important to us than the more obscure titles that we will always strive to stock and that may only ever sell every now and then.  Heaven forbid we should have decided to stock and promote the latest book (whatever that may be) by Jeremy Clarkson (for example) and put our efforts into promoting that, I dare say we could have scraped it in at number 24 (but we didn’t).  Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating picture of what folk have been buying throughout 2013 here in Cromford and we’ll wait and see what 2014 holds in store…
David Booker | January 2014

 

New Book About Cromford Published

Cromford Revisited – a stunning new book by Doreen Buxton and Christopher Charlton – has just been published and is available later this week from Scarthin Books, priced £18 (post free if ordered online).

This richly illustrated book examines some aspects of the development of Cromford and Scarthin from the mid eighteenth century.  It recognises, as it must, a village largely shaped by several generations of the Arkwright family but introduces a wider cast of local characters; the mill-building George Evans of Bonsall and Cromford; the neighbouring gentry, the Gels of Hopton; the financier Peter Nightingale of Lea and several generations of the Wheatcroft family who spread the name of Cromford nationwide along the country’s network of canals.  Also featured is a later resident, Charles White, the concealed hand behind the Lea Mills strike of 1911-12 and a colourful local politician who was to become West Derbyshire’s Member of Parliament.

In the austere conditions of the 1920s and 30s, with the Arkwright family gone and a squire’s paternalistic hand no longer directing affairs, the village learned to manage for itself.  Then in 1971 when the Arkwright Festival was held to celebrate the bicentenary of Richard Arkwright’s arrival in Cromford, it found itself in the spotlight of heritage celebrity, recognition which in 2001 led to its achieving a central position in the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.

ORDER ONLINE HERE

Forms of Intrigue and Woven Spaces

Forms of Intrigue and Woven Spaces

by Laura Ellen Bacon

9780956836625

Paperback  £6

For over a decade Derbyshire artist Laura Ellen Bacon has been making art of a unique and compelling quality.
As she says in her latest book, ” The ambition in my work is to generate a kind of intrigue and an appeal that touches a powerful nerve (perhaps ancient in its origin) that we cannot precisely locate”.
Laura’s work uses mainly willow, weaving large and complex structures outdoors. Initially I see them as nests, large and strange, yet recognisable, and I wonder what kind of creature could have made them. But then the more I look at them, the more mysterious they seem and I am indeed intrigued. They seem to take on alien forms and then seem alive, like creatures. The one at the Arts and crafts house in Cumbria certainly looks to my eyes like an animal scaling the wall.
Laura herself says “as if the work will continue to grow when the viewer’s back is turned ” and even in the book there is an almost hallucinatory sense of movement in much of her works.
Like Andy Goldsworthy and other environmental artists, her work seems both a natural part of the the environment and a striking addition to it. The installations on houses and walls bring nature in contact with man-made structures in ways that are unsettling – the one at the Artist’s House in Wiltshire seems almost threatening in the way that the nest-like structures creep along the house, reminding one of the power of nature, whilst at the same time reminiscent of an alien invasion.
The works require hours of repetitive work and, close-up, the repetitive yet complex patterns of the works are quite mesmerising. She also works in other materials, I was struck by her use of old computer cabling for her installation in London.
Willow is her main medium and she has recently begun to weave large structures that allow the interiors to be experienced. On pages 48-49 there is a striking structure appropriately called “into the weave”, at Derby Museum and Art Gallery.
The book is a very well produced and illustrated introduction to Laura Bacon’s work, and a bargain at the price, but it should serve as a spur to get out and view her work in its locations, which really bring home just what a talented and exciting artist she is.

Stephen Booth Booksigning Event

Stephen Booth will be here on Saturday 22nd June from 2.30-4.30pm to sign copies of his latest Cooper & Fry novel, Already Dead (published on 20th June).  The book will be in hardback and available at a special price of £15.

Stephen will also be signing copies of the paperback edition of his previous novel, Dead and Buried (£6.99).

To reserve a copy or request a dedication, email us at nickscarthin@gmail.com or telephone 01629 823272.

Matthew Carr Book Signing Event

Matthew Carr will be at Scarthin Books tomorrow (Saturday 27th) from 4pm to talk about and sign copies of his new book…

FORTRESS EUROPE
Dispatches from a Gated Continent

He has met and interviewed border officers and police, government officials, migrants, asylum-seekers, and civil society activists involved in an immigration drama of huge proportions.

Back from Poland, Spain, Greece, Malta, Turkey, Morocco ….
Matt will be at the bookshop to discuss this
important, timely book and to sign copies.

From 4 p.m until 5.30
(come early if you wish to catch a short talk & Q&A session)
On Saturday 27th October

Special Price ~~ Complimentary Light Refreshments
Tel. 01629 823272     email  nickscarthin@gmail.com

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