About Us

meet the team

emma
(mrs book-ish)

Fiction fanatic with a love of quirky characters: enjoys cackling hysterically at witty one-liners or ugly crying at 3 a/m into a book she can’t put down.

Runs everything, but particularly the Monday book group.

That Green Eyed Girl – Julie Owen Moyham
The Lincoln Highway – Amos Towles
Go As A River – Shelley Read
A Slow Fire Burning – Paula Hawkins

drew
(mr book-ish)

Outdoorsy type. Likes board games, sci-fi, philosophy, comedy, “proper music” and beer. Runs the Beer & Book Club and the monthly Book-ish quiz.

Douglas Adams
Jeff Vandermeer

echo

Administrator in chief. Our Lady of Instagram. Festival bookseller. OG Token American.

Likes melancholy non-fiction, about nature and life and learning. Appreciates a beautiful book, be it coffee table or children’s picture.

Lindsey

Schools bookseller. Former English teacher. Other Token American.

Likes all the books, all the time. Typically reading six things at once. Enjoys a good spredge over coffee. Heart belongs to YA, romance, and starting trilogies with book two.

LOREN

Mysterious, aquatic, possibly cryptid.
Avoiding the camera.

Reads literary fiction, spooky SFF and YA.

MEG

Enjoys a mixture of literary fiction, adventure, folklore fantasy and human relationships. Also loves getting stuck into non-fiction on nutrition and mental health, food memoirs and travel.

Animal – Lisa Taddeo
Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi
The Island of Sea Women – Lisa See
Heaven – Mieko Kawakami

owen

A writer of YA novels, stage and other media.
Loves books, theatre, music, film and TV.

The Earth Hums in B Flat – Mari Strachan

The Estate – Liza Costello

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith

the book-ish story

in the beginning

In her own words, Emma “had an early midlife crisis, sold my building surveying company and decided to become a bookseller – I’ve always loved books.” Coming home to Wales, Emma opened the doors onto Crickhowell’s fiercely independent high street in 2010, and we’ve been here ever since…

bigger better book-ish

In 2017, we moved five doors up the High Street. Our new location gave us the room to expand our catalogue to 6000 carefully curated books, as well as open up our children’s reading room (the Snug), in-house event venue (the Loft) and cracking café, supplied with the best local provender from the Brecon Beacons and beyond.

At Christmas 2021, we reached out to our community of customers, authors and friends with a crowd-funded drive to buy the building and secure our future. With their help, we did it, last thing on the night before Christmas Eve; you can’t ask for a better present than that!

lockdown and beyond

In 2020, floods turned Crickhowell into an island for a week – and a month after that, the world went into lockdown in the face of COVID-19.

Not that it stopped us – we became a mail order business overnight,
brought our events programme online as one of the 4 Indies,
and became the British Book Awards Independent Bookshop of the Year for 2020.

top of the class

2022 saw our biggest ever presence at festivals and events, partnered with Fane to sell at author events across the West of England, as well as immense growth in our school programme.

As part of the Books Council of Wales’ Schools Love Reading initiative, we brought thousands of books to primary and secondary schools all over south and mid-Wales
– and we were honoured to be named the best bookshop in Wales at the 2022 National Independent Book Awards.

volume 2

In 2023, we were thrilled to open our second shop on Frogmore Street in Abergavenny.

After a run of highly successful events at theatres, pubs, shops and other venues across Abergavenny, with guests from Robin Ince to Kae Tempest, and of course our annual presence at the Food Festival, we leapt at the opportunity to be here all day every day (well, six days a week – even we need to sleep sometimes).

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