Barnstaple Library

03/06/2026

Can you help us share the books everyone wants to read this month? 📚

There’s high demand for our 10 most wanted titles, and many eager customers are waiting to borrow them. We’ve purchased as many copies as our budget allows, but if you’re able to help, we’d be truly grateful.

If you have a pristine copy, you’ve finished reading - whether it’s one you bought yourself or received as a gift - you can donate it at any library in Devon or Torbay. We’ll add it to our collection to help reduce the waiting list.

Thank you so much for your support! 💚

Our 10 most popular titles this month are:

1. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
2. Land by Maggie O'Farrell
3. Ironwood by Michael Connelly
4. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
5. The Midnight Train by Matt Haig
6. Whistler by Ann Patchett
7. The Names by Florence Knapp
8. The Final Target by Nora Roberts
9. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
10. Enough by Dawn French

01/06/2026

Coming to our catalogue this June! 💚

Can’t find a book on the library’s shelves? Order it from our online catalogue and have it delivered to the library.

01/06/2026

Borrow our June titles with no queues. 🌻💚

Download free eAudiobooks, eMagazines and eBooks on BorrowBox! Simply log in with your library card and PIN.

01/06/2026

We’re ready to welcome you for breakfast. All free, all welcome thanks to funding from Warm Welcome Campaign

26/05/2026

Tickets on sale in the library or via Ticketsource link now!

📢 JUST ANNOUNCED

On Saturday 20th June, the WORDS ALIVE IN LIBRARIES tour reaches Barnstaple Library (Libraries Unlimited) for events with Michael Malay, who won The Wainwright Prize for his memoir LATE LIGHT (read more about this book below). Pay what you can and book now to join Michael for:

🕝 10.30am-12pm Nature Writing Workshop https://www.ticketsource.com/whats-on/barnstaple/barnstaple-library/nature-writing-workshop-with-michael-malay-at-barnstaple-library/e-glzbgq
🕔 2-3pm Author talk https://www.ticketsource.com/whats-on/barnstaple/barnstaple-library/author-event-michael-malay-at-barnstaple-library/e-glzbxm

Tickets here:

Late Light is the story of Michael Malay's own journey, an Indonesian Australian making a home for himself in England and finding strange parallels between his life and the lives of the animals he examines. Mixing natural history with memoir, this book explores the mystery of our animal neighbours, in all their richness and variety. It is about the wonder these animals inspired in our ancestors, the hope they inspire in us, and the joy they might still hold for our children.

Late Light is about migration, belonging and extinction. Through the close examination of four particular 'unloved' animals - eels, moths, crickets and mussels - Michael Malay tells the story of the economic, political and cultural events that have shaped the modern landscape of Britain.

For readers of Robert Macfarlane, Raynor Winn and Helen Macdonald, Late Light is a rich blend of memoir, natural history, nature writing, and a meditation on being and belonging, from a vibrant new voice.

About Michael:

Michael Malay is a teacher and writer based in Bristol. He spent his early years in Jakarta, Indonesia, before moving to Australia with his family at the age of ten. He is the author of Late Light, a book about migration, belonging and extinction, as well as an academic monograph, The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry. He is currently working on a book about John Berger.