Adapted from the major television series created by Mark Gatiss - new season coming soon!

London, 1946. Much of the capital, and indeed the country, remains beset by rationing and bomb damage. But for some there are other, more immediate concerns: crimes of a serious and sometimes deadly nature.

Inspector Bliss of Bow Street occasionally enlists the services of Gabriel Book, proprietor of Book's Books: antiquarian and amateur sleuth, whose appetite for mystery is rivalled only by his enthusiasm for rare second-hand volumes.

Working alongside Book are his wife and wallpaper shop-owner, Trottie; true crime fanatic Nora; and Jack, who's surprised to have found a home at Book's. They are all overseen by Dog, when otherwise unoccupied by his hunt for ginger biscuits.

Together, they sell books and solve crimes. But Book has his own personal mystery to solve - one that's haunted him for over a decade - and with each passing day, he draws closer to the truth.

Warm-hearted, witty and perfect for book lovers, Bookish Vol.II is a surprising, entertaining mystery about books, murder and the lengths we'll go to keep our secrets safe.

READERS LOVE BOOKISH

'A delicious read' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'Charming and entertaining' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'An enjoyable and very clever read' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'So unique and if you are a murder mystery fan give it a go' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Matthew Sweet is co-writer, with Mark Gatiss, of Bookish. He is a Fellow of the School of Advanced Study, University of London and the author of Inventing the Victorians, Shepperton Babylon, The West End Front, Operation Chaos and the crime novel The New Forest Murders. His biography, Barbara Cartland: The Great Dictator is published in September 2026. He is the presenter of Free Thinking (BBC Radio 4) and his 25 years of television and radio programmes include The Culture Show (BBC2), Checking into History (C4), 12 years of Sound of Cinema (Radio 3), five series of The Philosophers Arms (Radio 4), and 1922: The Birth of Now, a ten-part history of modernism (Radio 4). He has been film critic of the Independent on Sunday, photography critic of Newsweek and fashion columnist for 1843/The Economist. Liberation Radio - his collaboration with the artists Nhung Nguyen and Esther Johnson - has been staged at the Manzi gallery in Hanoi and at Index, the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm. In 2017 he and the baker Frances Quinn achieved a chocolate-related Guinness World record that held good until 2022, when it was broken by Ant and Dec.