Lighthouse - Edinburgh's Radical Bookshop

20/06/2026

We’re a little late to the party, but we were so pleased to see the winners of the 2026 Indie Book Awards were The Names and Arundhati Roy Mother Mary Comes to Me announced on Thursday during Indie Bookshop Week!

Our lovely Pao judged the fiction and non-fiction categories for the The Booksellers Association - this is what they had to say about The Names:

“What a beautiful stunner of a book. You’d never guess a book about domestic violence could be just as joyful as it was heart-breaking. I loved how it held the joys and griefs of life so beautifully. One of my favourite books of this year.”

Mother Mary Comes To Me was one of Noor’s favourite books of 2025. This is what she had to say about it:

“The life of this incredible woman never ceases to amaze me. We see her from a young girl observing the perplexities of the world, to a young student just barely scraping by, to the breakout novelist who wins the Booker prize with her debut, to the woman we know now: the bane of the Hindutva government and the clear-sighted trusted writer. Roy writes not just about her own life but about her difficult and complicated relationship with her own mother, Mary Roy, a powerhouse of a woman who devoted herself to the liberation of others but had little time or patience left for her own children. Nevertheless, Arundhati Roy writes about their relationship with dignity, love and respect, while honestly reflecting on the difficulties they had. I LOVED this book, and Roy retains her frank, funny and wry writing style that I love so much.”

You can check out the shortlist of this year’s Indie Book Awards on our website!

20/06/2026

20/06/2026

Open 10-8 today and feeling GAAAAAAAY.

We’re just around the corner from the end of the march in Bristo, come say hey, share some sparkle, have a seat, talk q***r books, all that good stuff!

Details on joining Pride’s RadBloc on the grid!

19/06/2026

We’ve been chatting about a particular joy - that of receiving a recommendation from a fellow bookseller. Spending your days in bookselling, titles and authors swirl around, fly past and pop up constantly. Visiting a different shop and being introduced to a book you’d missed, or hadn’t paid enough attention to, is a real treat - often these are also titles with a local connection, or a special story behind them. We bring them back and pass them on.

As we approach the end of Independent Bookshop Week, we’ve made a list of books we’ve been recommended by fellow booksellers at other bookshops we love - Review Bookshop Argonaut Books La Belle Adventure Fondo de Cultura Económica Colombia The Wedale Bookshop. You can check it out on our website.

Happy Indie Bookshop Week to all our lovely readers📚📚📚 Have we ever recommended something you’ve loved? Tell us in the comments!

17/06/2026

Join us for our upcoming Philosophy Bookclub, where we will be reading contemporary philosophers that concern themselves with the social and the hopeful! The overarching theme will be readings that engage in social critique that can help take us towards new forms of social hope.

This coming month, we’ll be exploring anthropologist David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules on Monday July 13th, 7pm-8:30pm.

This bookclub is open to everyone and anyone, with or without a background in philosophy. Philosophy is best characterised as a place to understand how things in the broadest possible sense hang together, and in that spirit, we welcome as many different backgrounds to give us the best chance of exploring how things hang together!

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Meetings will be hosted by Nic and take place every 5-6 weeks on Mondays at Lighthouse Bookshop.

Please support the bookshop & the bookclub by ordering your books through Lighthouse. Use the discount code HOPE-PHILOSOPHY-SOC for bookclubbers 10% off!

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The Book: The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms?

To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber – one of the most prominent and provocative thinkers working today – takes a journey through ancient and modern history to trace the peculiar and fascinating evolution of bureaucracy over the ages.

Starting in the ancient world, Graeber looks at how early civilizations were organized and what traces early bureaucratic systems have left in the ethnographic literature. He then jets forward to the nineteenth century, where systems we can easily recognize as modern bureaucracies come into being. In some areas of life – like with the modern postal systems of Germany and France – these bureaucracies have brought tremendous efficiencies to modern life. But Graeber argues that there is a much darker side to modern bureaucracy that is rarely ever discussed. Indeed, in our own “utopia of rules,” freedom and technological innovation are often the casualties of systems that we onl

17/06/2026

Join us on Tuesday 23rd of June for the launch of author Anam’s latest earth-shattering drama of resistance and female power, Uprising.

Acclaimed by Elif Shafak, Salman Rushdie and Tash Aw, and 2026 The Orwell Prize finalist for Political Fiction, Uprising offers an unmissable story of revolution.

The event will be chaired by Lighthouse bookseller Noor, winner of the Individual Bookseller of the Year award at the

The event will take place in Lighthouse Bookshop from 7-8 PM, with a q&a and signing. If you’d like to come along, grab your tickets from our website!

16/06/2026

Join us for a summer Sunday evening event in the lighthouse garden with Jane Healey, as she introduces her brand-new enthralling novel, Crescendo!

Chaired by journalist and screenwriter Amna Saleem, we’ll be exploring Haealey’s enthralling story of sibling rivalry, q***r attraction and the high-pressure world of classical music!

Tickets are available from our website and eventbrite.

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To help tune your ear in time for our launch of Crescendo, we went in search of novels where music plays a central role. Visit our Music In Fiction post on our website to read more!

Which musical novels would be on your list?

15/06/2026

15th - 21st June is Refugee Week 🧡. Established in the UK in 1998 around World Refugee Day on 20th June, it is ‘the world’s largest arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary.’

Writing about Pride Month recently, Mairi noted how, even though Lighthouse is q***r all year, June brings ‘a galvanising energy to a q***r space like ours, and we’re going to need to bank those good vibes more than ever’. So with Refugee Week. Precisely because the plight of asylum seekers, the violence of borders and a cruel migration system are ever present, we need to harness all the attention and energy there is in the struggle for migrant justice - marking a week like this can be helpful for that, as long as it doesn’t excuse neglect the rest of the year.

This past week we’ve seen the far right gain ground on our streets, using death and tragedy as an excuse for untethered bigotry and leaving many communities feeling unsafe at home. We’ve also seen magnificent resistance.

Those efforts need buoyancy and the means to remain sustainable. They must also remain anchored in the needs of those most vulnerable to racist violence.

Looking back through the Lighthouse web archive, we’ve assembled a list of recorded events and resources on our website, highlighting both the reality of displaced people, and the work of those dedicated to saving lives in an inhumane system.

12/06/2026

A real treat to have legend pop by the shop this morning to sign copies of their brilliant book The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones and some of their (extensive!) backlist.

We love Lex’s books here at Lighthouse - two of us have already devoured Briar and can’t stop talking about it.

If you’re curious about it, here’s Christina’s review: “A magical boarding school with astute class, wealth and power analysis, and kissing, and chaotic friendships, and funny jokes, and a tightly plotted mystery. I loved it.”

You can get signed copies of Briar in the shop and on our website!

11/06/2026

If you love the magical drama of Lore Olympus and the heartfelt vibes of Heartstopper, Arcana will be your next q***r graphic novel obsession!

Join us for an exciting event to celebrate Arcana: The Cursed Fate, and meet SAM PRENTiCE-jONES, the brilliant author-illustrator behind the new series, as he shares his creative journey, insider tips, and advice for aspiring authors and artists. Explore gorgeous artwork, discover the secrets of building epic worlds, and get inspired to create your own stories.

Whether you’re a fan of fantasy, q***r romance, or incredible art, this event is your chance to connect, learn, and celebrate something truly magical. In an interactive workshop Sam will guide you through a hands‑on collaging session where you’ll create your very own tarot card! 🌟

Tuesday 23rd June, 5.30-6.30pm in the bookshop garden - see you there! Tickets available on the website and in the link in bio.