Welcome
Heron Books, Clifton’s only independent bookshop, can be found in the historic Clifton Arcade on Boyce’s Avenue.
The shop stocks a range of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, 4000 of them in a carefully planned cosy space. Heron Books offers personal recommendations and the creation of bespoke gift lists for special occasions, and runs events, including a monthly poetry series and several book groups. Where not already on the shelves, books can be ordered for home delivery by Royal Mail and, if you live really nearby, staff can exceptionally cycle over to deliver them personally.
The shop is a welcoming space. We like nothing more than talking about books; if the book in question features a heron, all the better.
Opening Hours
Monday-Friday: 10am-5:30pm
Saturday: 9am-6pm
Sunday: 11am-4pm
Unit 5, The Clifton Arcade
Boyce’s Avenue
Bristol, BS8 4AA
0117 431 0616
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News
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Flash Fiction Competition Result
As part of our Independent Bookshop Week partnership with And Other Stories, we held a flash fiction competition, in honour of their commitment to and our love of exceptional short fiction. Writers were invited to submit 400 words on the theme of ‘independence’. The submissions were brilliantly varied, from the realist to the surreal to…
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On Planet Heron – 22/06/2024
An eight-day week later, we have had a brilliant time partnering with publisher And Other Stories and championing their books. And Other Numbers:One poetry reading (two poets), two book groups, one flash fiction competition (lots of entries, five shortlisted).Five hundred temporary tattoos, some glasses of wine (accurate data not found), many towers of AOS books,…
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This Must Be The Place – 15 June 2024
Welcome to Independent Bookshop Week; the much-anticipated eight-day week is here and our partnership with publisher And Other Stories kicks off. Welcome to The Heronry; do come and admire our And Other Stories book displays and artwork and pick up a (temporary) And Other Herons tattoo, as well as lots of AOS books. Welcome to…
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Waterlogged Herons – 9 June 2024
Sometimes it is clear where I ought to begin with the newsletter. In recent weeks, having spent time in a walled garden in Suffolk with Olivia Laing, an Arcadian newsletter grew. Writing down passages from Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 offered abundant chain reactions. And a few trips across the Atlantic between Enniscorthy and Long Island…
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Question Heron – 2 June 2024
Richard Flanagan’s latest book is breathtaking. I want to write that it is ‘electrifying’ but it is in part about nuclear fission so that may not be the correct term. Question 7 tells the story of Flanagan’s parents’ lives and deaths, including his father’s internment at Ohama Camp, Japan, during the second world war, of…
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To Long Island – 26 May 2024
Authors who know what to leave unwritten, narrators who place their confidence in implication and characters who leave truths unspoken are the order of the day. Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which this week won the International Booker Prize, is an exemplar. The story is of an affair between a young woman and a much older…