Nicholas Royle’s love of second-hand books and the ‘inclusions’ he finds inside them, their presence betrayed by ‘shadow lines’, is about making connections. Someone has scribbled a number in a book? He’ll text or call. An old address? He’ll return the book to where it used to live. Follow him as he walks between bookshops, reading as he goes, on the hunt for treasure, for ways to make us feel closer – to the books on our shelves, to each other and to our own lives.

Share in Royle’s enthusiasm for the Rev W Awdry’s Railway Series, Penguin Modern Stories and Paul Auster’s cult classic, The New York Trilogy, as well as books in art and film.

The brilliant follow-up to the instant classic, White Spines.

Praise for White Spines

‘A fiercely intelligent memoir of an obsession by one of our leading prose stylists, but also a loving and enormously warm-hearted record of a life lived in books. I adored White Spines and will treasure my copy  every bit as much as Royle treasures his beloved Picadors.‘ –Alex Preston

If you love books, bookshops and browsing, this is your perfect all-year gift – head to your happy place with a copy Shadow Lines today! (Note: ‘inclusions’ not supplied.)

A mix of memoir and narrative non-fiction, White Spines is a book about Nicholas Royle’s passion for Picador’s fiction and non-fiction publishing from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s. It explores the bookshops and charity shops, the books themselves, and the way a unique collection grew and became a literary obsession. Above all a love song to books, writers and writing.