The Bookshop on the Corner: A Novel

by Jenny Colgan

Overview

Nina Redmond is a librarian with a gift for finding the perfect book for her readers. But can she write her own happy-ever-after? In this valentine to readers, librarians, and book-lovers the world over, the New York Times-bestselling author of Little Beach Street Bakery returns with a funny, moving new novel for fans of Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop.

 

Nina is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.

 

Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile — a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling. 

From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062467256
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/20/2016
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	18,073
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Jenny Colgan is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels, including The Café by the Sea, The Bookshop on the Corner, Little Beach Street Bakery, and Christmas on the Island. Jenny is married with three children and lives in Scotland.

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2016
For young librarian Nina Redmond, nothing brings greater satisfaction than placing the perfect book in the hands of eager readers. To her dismay, her library in Birmingham, England, is downsizing and changing its focus. This presents petite, timid Nina with an opportunity to follow a dream of creating a bookstore on wheels. Relocating to the Scottish Highlands is an uncharacteristic act of daring for her. Driving an unwieldy mobile bookstore and living in a modernized remote barn introduces her to a world of small towns and stunning wide open spaces, along with a community of hungry readers. Nina blossoms as she matches books with both the young and old, all while engaging in two romantic flirtations. Who will win her heart, Lennox, a brusque sheep farmer working through a bitter divorce, or Marek, a lonely Latvian train engineer who leaves her romantic notes? VERDICT Colgan's latest (after Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery) gently acknowledges the UK's recent library funding problem as well as the new roles libraries are assuming. Scotland is a bonny setting for this funny, winsome novel that will appeal to fans of Nina George's The Little Paris Bookshop.—Gloria Drake, Oswego P.L. Dist., IL

Library Journal

2016-07-05
What’s a shy English librarian to do when she’s downsized out of a job and her only hope for remaining employed is to become a social media–savvy coordinator of online content?For 29-year-old Nina, it’s time to pursue her dream of opening a small bookshop. After all, since no one reads anymore, the library system is practically throwing away its books, and no will mind if Nina rescues them like orphans and finds them new homes. Certainly her roommate, the beautiful Surinder, will be pleased to rid their apartment of the architecture-imperiling weight of piles of novels. But real estate is expensive, so Nina decides to buy a van and travel around in a mobile bookstore. She locates the perfect vehicle in Kirrinfief, Scotland, where her real adventures begin. Soon enough, she’s relocated to the Highlands, and her life is newly populated with delightfully quirky characters, including Marek, a Latvian train engineer and romantic hero, who begins exchanging love letters and books of poetry with Nina on a tree at a railway crossing; Ainslee, a mercurial teenage girl eager for a job yet wary of revealing anything about her home life; and Lennox, Nina’s grumpy landlord, who’s separated from his posh wife and who increasingly occupies Nina’s thoughts. Amid the gorgeous scenery of Scotland, Nina sets out to find the right book for everyone in her new town. With a keen eye for the cinematic, Colgan (Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery, 2016, etc.) is a deft mistress of romantic comedy; Nina’s story is laced with clever dialogue and scenes set like jewels, just begging to be filmed. A charming, bracingly fresh happily-ever-after tale with playful nods to the Outlander series.

Kirkus Reviews