author : Shaun Bythell

Meet Shaun Bythell, bookshop owner, bibliophile and misanthrope extraordinaire. He lives and works in The Bookshop, Wigtown, whose crooked shelves contain anything from a sixteenth-century Bible to a first-edition Agatha Christie. A booklover’s paradise? Well, almost…

In Shaun’s honest and wryly hilarious diaries, he reveals the highs and lows of life in the book trade, as he contends with eccentric customers, bin-foraging employees and a perennially empty till. Along the way he'll take you on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommend lost classics – and introduce you to the thrill of the unexpected find.

Instead, beset by bizarre requests from customers who appear not to know what a shop is, locked in an endless struggle with Amazon and terrorised by his bin-diving, poultice-making employees, Shaun’s trials and tribulations make his life very far from a fairy tale.

Warm, honest and very, very funny, Confessions of a Bookseller is the real story of a life lived in books.

In Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops he distils the essence of his experience into a warm, witty and quirky taxonomy of the book-loving public. So, step inside to meet the crafty Antiquarian, the shy and retiring Erotica Browser and gormless yet strangely likeable shop assistant Student Hugo – along with much loved bookseller favourites like the passionate Sci-Fi Fan, the voracious Railway Collector and the ever-elusive Perfect Customer.

But while customers come and go – whether or not they’ve paid – there’s never a quiet moment in The Bookshop. Apart from the usual stream of die-hard trainspotters, antiquarian porn collectors and toddlers looking for somewhere cosy to urinate, Shaun still must contend with his employees’ increasingly eccentric habits, the mayhem of the Wigtown Book Festival and the shock of the town’s pub changing hands.

Warm and witty, with Shaun’s iconic mix of deadpan humour and grouchy charm, Remainders of the Day is the latest in his bestselling diary series.