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Rue Baldry

@rue.baldry

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Author of Dwell (out June 11th Northodox Press) & Nice Things (out Dec 2nd FOTW). Winner of the First Novel Prize & Commonwealth Prize Region

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📚 A LITTLE LOVE FOR INDIE AUTHORS! ❤️

As an independent bookshop, we know just how important it is to support small businesses. But there's another group of independents who deserve a little love too. Independent authors! ✍️

Writing a book is no small achievement. But writing it, getting it published, promoting it, and convincing people to give it a chance? That's a whole different challenge!

We actually had a lovely visit from Carolyn Kirby, author of Ravenglass, today, which got us thinking about just how lucky we are to have so many talented indie authors supporting our little bookshop. ❤️

We've had the pleasure of meeting and working with several of them, and we're incredibly proud to have their books on our shelves.

From historical fiction and gripping thrillers to children's adventures and everything in between, there's some fantastic talent out there that deserves to be discovered.

📖 Pictured are just a few of the indie titles we're proud to stock:

💜 Ravenglass by Carolyn Kirby
🖤 The Butcher Boys by Chris Gill
❤️ Caelum Lake by Axl Malton
🌿 Dwell by Rue Baldry
💙 Code Blue: Diagnosis Deception by Sudip Bhaduri
🏴‍☠️ The Ship's Cat by Katie Scorah
🔎 The Mystery of the Missing Brooch by Wendy Boynton

One of the best things about being an independent bookshop is being able to give books like these a space alongside the big names and bestselling authors.

So here's to the indie authors putting their stories out into the world. Keep writing, keep creating, and keep doing what you do. ❤️

And a special thank you to Carolyn for popping in today. It's always lovely when the people behind the books come to say hello!

To our lovely customers, next time you're browsing our shelves, why not take a chance on an author you've never heard of? You might just discover your next favourite book!

Because every bestselling author was once an unknown author. 📚

#BelovedBooks #SupportIndieAuthors #IndependentAuthors #ShopIndie #IndieBookshop #DiscoverYourNextRead #SupportLocalAuthors #Boroughbridge

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Immersive short stories examining class, race, gender, and sexuality through the lens of physical spaces and who is allowed to occupy them... Preorder Rue Baldry's collection and receive it signed!
https://www.flyonthewallpress.co.uk/product-page/nice-things-by-rue-baldry

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3rd Quarter Favourites 💕📚🗓️

We’re in the last quarter of the year and here’s a wrap up of my 3rd Quarter faves and my faves from the first half.
Another Jess Kidd in the faves which makes it three in total of hers in my faves so far this year.

What’s been your stand out read this year?

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Couldn’t resist a flying visit to York on our epic north east detour, to experience the wonderful new Toppings bookshop for myself.

Every summer for the last few years, I’ve loved browsing (and spending lots!) @toppingsstas as well as enjoying trips to @toppingsedin and @toppingsbath Their gorgeous aesthetic is so sympathetic to the vast range of brilliant books they so beautifully curate, every visit is a delight.

All of which means it was totally fantastic to find copies of my small indie press book on a table in the stunning new fiction room which looks out to York Minster, and to be welcomed so warmly by lovely bookseller, Ally to sign them. Truly a ‘pinch me’ moment! Thank you so much @toppingsyork and @toppingsedin for supporting Rose & Renzo
😍

Lovely to spot Dwell there too by fellow @northodoxpressofficial writer @rue.baldry ❤️

#bookstagram

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Another day, another trend🤣 thank you to the absolutely fantastic @randomly.eric for the tag🤗

May have thrown a bit of shade here but hey ho 😉 any agreement? Any disagreement? What do we think? 🫶

#booksbooksbooks #bookreviews #readmorebooks #readwithme

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Liverpool ❤️

24 hours in Liverpool involved a whistle stop tour of a couple of the city centre indie bookshops and they did not disappoint.

📍 News From Nowhere, Bold Street
This was my first stop and was immediately a hit. News From Nowhere is a not for profit, radical and community bookshop established in 1974. Such a great mix of fiction, non fiction covering every subject you could wish for and trinkets. On my second lap of the shop, I let out an audible gasp as I spotted Dwell by Rue Baldry. This is a book I’ve been after for a little while, ever since I saw @lilys_book_nook talk about it over on TikTok. It’s always so much fun to spot books out in the wild that we’re excited about.

📍Reid of Liverpool, Mt Pleasant
My second stop and the only surviving Georgian, purpose built retail premises in the city. Built around 1785. Liverpool City Council did me dirty with that bus stop placement. I arrived at the shop 20 minutes before closing so I didn’t linger for too long and I didn’t take many pictures. I did stay for long enough to know that this shop is a treasure trove of second hand books, as well as being a treasure of a shop itself.

Finally, I did the only thing left to be done after a long day on your feet. I went to the pub. Not just any pub though. This is The Vines on Lime Street which has the vibiest, baroque style. The skulls and crows on display convinced me that i had somehow ended up in Edgar Allen Poe’s house. It was the perfect spot to take in a few pages of my current read, Gentle Things by Danielle Giles. *This is a proof copy that was very kindly sent to me by Pan Macmillan for review. I’m a little behind… but I am absolutely loving this one so far and couldn’t have asked for a better immersive reading experience as the book is set in an inn in 1668 London.

Oh, and I walked past Central Library 💁‍♀️

Would love to know if you’ve been to any of these spots and where I should go next time!

#liverpool#bookshopping#indiebookshop#bookish

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Some exciting new book post just in today from our friends @flyonthewallpress - coming later this year!

In September, Opt Indie favourite @johnironmonger gifts us The Angel of St Piran. A story that takes readers from a quiet Cornish fishing village to the treetops of a remote African island, where a young researcher lives alongside chimpanzees in a tale of adventure, courage, and connection. John has such a distinct style of eco-fiction, packed with heart, that I just can’t get enough of it.

October brings lawyer and writer Dzena Andersone’s Ice, Flower, Herbarium, translated by Žanete Vēvere Pasqualini. A chilling, atmospheric novel set in a snowbound Latvian town, where buried secrets, inherited trauma, and a decades-old mystery slowly come to light. It sounds perfect for when the nights start drawing in.

Then in December, award-winning York-based writer @rue.baldry delivers the short story collection Nice Things. Exploring identity, sexuality and class across the industrial towns and villages of the North, it includes the Commonwealth Prize-winning story “Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things.” Definitely one to watch.

Three very different books, all right up my street. @isabellepublishes, you know me so well. Thanks for the early copies!

We can’t wait to dive in and tell you all about them.

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11 debut novels you should have on your shelves – all written by the brilliant alumni of our #Discoveries programme!

From explorations of grief and apostasy to baking competitions and National Trust art heists – there is something for every reader in this stack.

Read the piece linked in our bio to learn more about each book alongside four more upcoming releases that you can hear from at @edbookfest this August☀️

In the stack:
📘Dwell by @rue.baldry
📘 We Call Them Witches by @indiarosebower
📘It Comes in Waves by @ruksandbooks
📘The Windhover by @lornaelcockwriter
📘Jenny Quinn's Rise to Fame by @oliviajaneford
📘Red on the Inside by @lizziekuligowski
📘No Oil Painting by @genevievemarenghi
📘The Honeymoon Suite by @rebeccataylormckay
📘Ordinary Saints by @niamhsquared
📘Over, by @ruthrosengarten
📘 This Immaculate Body by @evswrites

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"Dwell, Baldry's debut novel, has been a standout read for me so far this year, and as such I approached this, her second book, with a mix of excitement and trepidation. Would it be as good? Would it live up to its predecessor, or would it be a disappointment? Well, I needn't have worried, as Nice Things is a worthy follow-up.

As the subtitle says, this is a linked collection of short stories on the theme of desire, displacement, and disquiet, and each short tale contains much to unpack. Indeed, two of the most thought-provoking - Reflection (which reconsiders the myth of Narcissus) and Facility (about the current furore over toilets and trans individuals) - are only a couple of pages each. LGBTQ+ themes dominate the stories here, in the way that straight themes dominate most other literature, and it is refreshing to see stories where sexuality becomes an aspect of the tale, rather than the focus.

Taken together, the collection shows that often nice things are a façade, masking hidden troubles or darkness - the immaculate house and lifestyle, whose owners are shallow and empty; the honeymoon suite that hides disharmony; the catch-ups with friends that prove you've never really known each other. There is an underscore of melancholy in the lives of Baldry's protagonists, which helps to provide them with an existence before and after the snapshot of their days that we get, and we are left thinking of them long after their tale is done; dwelling, if you will. Good short stories manage to conjure whole worlds and existences through the close, considered use of language, and these are perfect examples of such economy.

One last (nice) thing: for any readers of Baldry's novel, there is a surprising cameo from a familiar character, which provides some very interesting and enlightening character development. And I don't think I'll now look at a peach in quite the same way...

🍑 Nice Things is published on 1st December - thank you so much to @rue.baldry and @flyonthewallpress for my ARC!"
REPOST @matts.shelflife

#fiction #shortstories #independentpublisher #review

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Dwell, Baldry's debut novel, has been a standout read for me so far this year, and as such I approached this, her second book, with a mix of excitement and trepidation. Would it be as good? Would it live up to its predecessor, or would it be a disappointment? Well, I needn't have worried, as Nice Things is a worthy follow-up.

As the subtitle says, this is a linked collection of short stories on the theme of desire, displacement, and disquiet, and each short tale contains much to unpack. Indeed, two of the most thought-provoking - Reflection (which reconsiders the myth of Narcissus) and Facility (about the current furore over toilets and trans individuals) - are only a couple of pages each. LGBTQ+ themes dominate the stories here, in the way that straight themes dominate most other literature, and it is refreshing to see stories where sexuality becomes an aspect of the tale, rather than the focus.

Taken together, the collection shows that often nice things are a façade, masking hidden troubles or darkness - the immaculate house and lifestyle, whose owners are shallow and empty; the honeymoon suite that hides disharmony; the catch-ups with friends that prove you've never really known each other. There is an underscore of melancholy in the lives of Baldry's protagonists, which helps to provide them with an existence before and after the snapshot of their days that we get, and we are left thinking of them long after their tale is done; dwelling, if you will. Good short stories manage to conjure whole worlds and existences through the close, considered use of language, and these are perfect examples of such economy.

One last (nice) thing: for any readers of Baldry's novel, there is a surprising cameo from a familiar character, which provides some very interesting and enlightening character development. And I don't think I'll now look at a peach in quite the same way...

🍑 Nice Things is published on 1st December - thank you so much to @rue.baldry and @flyonthewallpress for my ARC!

Ad / PR / Gifted

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#fiction #shortstories #independentpublisher #review

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Seen this trend so many times so thought I'd jump on🤣 have loved seeing the different ways people have done it💛 but who gives a fuck if people don't like your taste in books?! We all read different things because we are all different and that's okay, that's why books are written! Read whatever you want and enjoy every moment🥰💛

#booksbooksbooks #bookreviews #readmorebooks #readwithme

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Dwell by Rue Baldry is set in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Albert has returned from the trenches traumatised and haunted by the past. He takes a post as a gardener at a rural boarding school in Northumberland. Here, he meets schoolboy Edgar, a year younger than him, but of a different social class. The attraction is immediate and mutual. An elicit love affair ensues. We follow the pair as they move to Birmingham, where Edgar trains to be a doctor while Albert plays the outward role of his servant so they can live together. We hope against all hope that their love will be allowed to flourish. The novel flicks deftly from vivid and visceral scenes of the past to sensual and tender scenes of the present, as all the while their love is threatened by external forces. Baldry's masterful debut is as beautifully written as it is moving. I thoroughly recommend this wonderful book. @rue.baldry @northodoxpressofficial

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