Christina Soteriou is on a mission to make eating plants exciting. In Big Veg Energy , Christina shares 100 simple, tasty and nutritious recipes to be enjoyed by everyone – from long-time vegans to anyone simply looking to adopt more plant-based habits. With influences from Christina’s Cypriot roots, expect nourishing, vibrant food, including Spicy Mushroom Skewers with Peanut Lime Sauce, Sweet Potatoes with Tahini Butter Chickpeas, Roasted Courgettes with Lemony Whipped Tofu and Peanut Butter Cherry Jam Semifreddo.

Always fresh and healthy, with advice for making sure meals are packed with protein and nutrients, Big Veg Energy has everything you need to move towards a plant-based lifestyle – including money-saving tips and debunked vegan myths. With chapters including Small Plates, Big Platters, Cosy Bowls, Baking Dish and Dessert Spoon, Christina makes eating plants easy, abundant and joyful, for whatever the occasion.

Join us at Bell House where Christina will be discussing her new book and dishing out some tasty samples.

Christina Soteriou is a chef, recipe writer and content creator who creates plant-based food for people who love to eat, inspired by the Mediterranean flavours of her Greek Cypriot heritage. Christina’s passion for food has made her determined to find creative and nutritious ways to make plant-based dishes as tasty as possible. Find her online @christinasots and at christina-soteriou.com

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Come to Village Books to meet Oliver Jeffers, author of the multi-million copy How to Catch a Star, where he’ll be signing copies of his new book Where to Hide a Star .

Where to Hide a Star is a brand-new story from global picture book phenomenon Oliver Jeffers featuring his much-loved characters, the boy and the penguin. Once there was a boy who would often play hide-and-seek with his friends the star and the penguin. The star was always easy to find, but one day it went missing. So, the boy radioed the Martian for help and soon found himself on an exciting spaceship rescue mission to the North Pole! But there, he discovered that he wasn’t the only one who had always dreamed of having a star as a friend…

We want all fans to have the best possible experience meeting Oliver. In the interest of the limited time available and to maximise the number of readers that Oliver can meet, the following terms and conditions will be in effect for this book signing. We are putting these rules in place for the safety and enjoyment of everyone involved.

Terms and conditions :

Due to the anticipated high turn-out, please come prepared to queue – we will aim to keep you updated on your waiting time which may be around an hour. You will need to queue outside on Calton Avenue so please do come dressed appropriately for the weather and keep hydrated. Our shop is small so to keep everyone safe we’ll be letting you in a few at a time.

Please note the event may be filmed of photographed, as an attendee you consent to footage and/or images of you being used for promotional purposes.

If you have further questions, please contact us.

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In 2022, after eight years of political reporting in the US, Jon Sopel moved home to the UK. Having spent almost a third of his career abroad, he returned to find a very different country to the one he left. In Strangeland , Jon examines the new post-Brexit Britain with fresh eyes, as a native who’s been out but come back. With his characteristic wit and clarity, he unpicks the changes that have rendered his homeland almost unrecognisable from the country he once knew.

Strangeland is a personal exploration of post-Brexit Britain and what it now means to be British, from the bestselling author, political insider, and presenter of the chart-topping podcast, The News Agents .

Jon Sopel was the BBC’s North America Editor for 8 years, before launching The News Agents podcast with Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall in August 2022. During his time at the BBC, he covered the 2016 and 2020 elections and Trump’s White House at first hand, reporting for the BBC across TV, radio and online, as well as presenting the highly successful Americast podcast with Emily Maitlis and Anthony Zurcher. He is the author of If Only They Didn’t Speak English: Notes from Trump’s America , A Year at the Circus: Inside Trump’s White House and UnPresidented: Politics, Pandemics and the Race that Trumped All Others

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Join Village Books & Alleyn’s Schools Enterprises for an evening with bestselling and multi-award-winning author, Meera Sodha.

Dinner: 120 vegan and vegetarian recipes for the most important meal of the day is the new book from the Guardian columnist, and is a fresh and joyful celebration of the power of a good meal.

Discover vibrant, easy-to-make vegetarian and vegan main dishes bursting with flavour, including baked butter paneer, kimchi and tomato spaghetti and aubergines roasted in satay sauce. There are also ludicrously delicious desserts, such as coconut and cardamom dream cake and bubble tea ice cream, and versatile and surprising side dishes, including salt and vinegar potato salad and asparagus and cashew thoran.

From quick-cook recipes to one-pan wonders, Dinner is the essential companion for the most important meal of the day.

Meera Sodha is a cook and a food writer, renowned for her Asian-inspired, meat-free recipes. She writes the Guardian’s weekly ‘The New Vegan’ column , and is the author of three best-selling cookbooks: Made in India , Fresh India and East . She cooks, writes and lives in London with her husband and daughter.

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Village Books and Alleyn’s Schools Enterprises are delighted to host an evening with three-Michelin starred chef Pierre Koffmann celebrating a new edition of his award-winning cookbook Memories of Gascony

With recipes and reminiscences from his grandparents’ home in rural Gascony, this is an intimate account of school holidays spent on the farm helping his grandfather to harvest and hunt, and learning to treasure seasonality, simplicity and the best ingredients at his grandmother’s side.

The recipes stand the test of time and speak to the food tastes and trends of today. While you read the charming stories of everyday life on the farm, you’ll devour the cuisine as you go along.

“If you do not own a copy of Pierre Koffmann’s glorious Memories of Gascony your cookbook collection is not complete. Brilliant to read; even better to cook from.” Jay Rayner

Pierre Koffmann has been at the heart of fine cuisine in Britain for nearly fifty years. After working as a young chef in France, Koffmann arrived in London in 1970 to work under Michel and Albert Roux at Le Gavroche and then the Waterside Inn. Within six years of opening, La Tante Claire had its third Michelin star. Between them Koffmann’s protégés now boast over twenty Michelin stars in their own right.

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Join Paul Wood for a guided walk through Dulwich Village to celebrate the publication of the revised London’s Street Trees.

Paul, London’s best known tree expert will lead a circular walking tour from Village Books (Dulwich Village). He’ll be pointing out the great diversity of trees planted on our streets, followed by a book signing at the bookshop. There will also be wine and nibbles on your return to the bookshop.

The first guide to reveal the full, amazing variety of London’s street tree population, London’s Street Trees is now an agenda-setting, canonical work. The capital’s street tree population has continued to grow and gloriously diversify and the book is now in it’s third edition with new revisions and additions.

Every year boroughs all over the capital are planting new species, from winter-flowering cherries to brighten up winter to Hackney’s shocking pink-leaved Toona sinensis.

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In January 2022, the Cellan-Jones-Coyle family said goodbye to their beloved elderly Collie Cross, Cabbage. Newly retired, Rory had become inseparable from her during daily pandemic walks which alleviated his Parkinson’s Disease symptoms. After a grief-stricken year, Rory and his wife Diane contemplated opening up their hearts again and came across a dog listing for ‘a kind girl who loves everybody and is just looking for her forever home’. Bright-eyed, big-eared and trembling, Sophie arrives in London from Central Europe in a van on 17th December.

Rory holds the Romanian rescue in his arms, excited for their first walk together – unaware it is more than a year ahead. Sophie from Romania follows the journey of her adoption – from her battles with anxiety, to the joys of play and her first foray outside. This is the story of #SophieFromRomania, told in full for the first time.

Rory Cellan-Jones was the BBC’s principal technology correspondent until 2021. He now writes an influential Substack column on medical innovation, tech and his beloved Romanian rescue dog, Sophie. Through this and his Twitter following @ruskin147 he spreads awareness of technological developments in the fields of medicine, health care and – more specifically – Parkinson’s. Together with Jeremy Paxman and several others he has begun a new podcast on Parkinson’s called Movers and Shakers .

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Stand-up comedian Jenny Eclair was the first woman to win the Perrier Award – the UK’s top comedy award – in 1995. Jokes, Jokes, Jokes is Jenny’s very funny memoir about elbowing her way into the male dominated world of comedy.

Daughter of Major Derek Hargreaves (spy?) and June Hargreaves (spy’s wife?) sister of Sara (born to be Head Girl) and Ben (the usurper), Jenny’s comedy career took off via drama school, cider, sausage rolls, sleeping with men who looked like they lived under a carpet, punk poetry, anorexia, bedsit misery, waitressing and not really having a clue about anything.

This was a world before microphones, mobile phones, before everyone gave up smoking or started taking coke. Jenny Eclair was on the comedy circuit before there really was a comedy circuit and was the first woman to win the Perrier Award along the way. Still gigging to sell-out crowds forty years later, Jenny Eclair’s memoir charts her childhood, her career and the changing face of women in comedy, all told with hilarious brilliance.

Jenny is well known for her starring role on BBC 1’s Grumpy Old Women which ran for three series and was then adapted into four live shows touring across the UK and Australia, all of which Jenny co-wrote and starred in. Continuing her partnership with Judith Holder, producer of Grumpy Old Women, Jenny co-hosts the podcast Older and Wider the podcast for people who don’t know what a podcast is, a weekly ramble about life, with additional swearing. She is also the writer of the much-loved BBC Radio Four Little Lifetimes monologues which ran for seven series.

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In his most thrilling novel yet and the first in a series, William Boyd, Britain’s greatest storyteller transports you to the vibrant streets of sixties London, as an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession…

In Gabriel’s Moon , Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a tragedy: every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story.

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series with Channel 4. In 2005, Boyd was awarded the CBE. Over a glittering forty year career, William Boyd has sold over 2 million books through TCM, winning countless awards in the process.

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Rick Stein is back with a major new BBC Two tv series and book, Rick Stein’s Food Stories, a celebration of the best of British food and the way we eat now.

Rick Stein’s Food Stories is a glorious collection of over 100 new recipes that celebrate the flavours, ingredients and stories of modern Britain. Rick travels every region of the British Isles to include not only traditional favourites but also his twist on new dishes that have become part of our national cuisine like kubo pork belly adobo, arros roja, paneer jalfrezi and chicken katsu curry.

Join Village Books and Alleyn’s Schools Enterprises for an evening with Rick Stein and Good Housekeeping’s Gaby Huddart where he’ll be discussing his delicious and inspiring journey through Britain’s joyous and every-changing food scene.

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