iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Tricia Lockwood @tricialockwood.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I felt like I needed seroquel after that NYer vivisectors review

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Profile Books @profilebooks.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

'One of the West's most interesting public intellectuals' – THE TIMES #InTheRealmOfTheLastMan is a captivating history of the late-twentieth century from the world-renowned political scientist and thinker. Francis Fukuyama's new memoir is out TODAY. Get your copy: tinyurl.com/yrnrzc67

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Karolina Sutton @karolinasutton.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Sobering and important. (Via my wonderful colleague @john-ash.bsky.social) @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social

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The Bookseller @thebookseller.com · 06/08/2026

Orbit UK has acquired three novels in an epic fantasy trilogy from British author Russell Franklin. The first book, Void Caller, is scheduled for publication in July 2027.👇

ebx.sh

Russell Franklin’s epic fantasy trilogy goes to Orbit UK

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Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I wrote about a frustrating, brilliant novel that deals with how devoid of connections and curiosity the world has become, and then, fittingly, I wrote (again) about how AI is ruining the book publishing industry. www.themarisreview.com/the-maris-re...

themarisreview.com

The Maris Review, vol 116

The theme of the week is how AI is making the world (more) stupid What I read this week The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams What to do with this frustrating, brilliant novel! I almost wanted to t...

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I’m in The Times today! I've written about Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat, obeying your own 'queer dictatorial sense’, and scaring yourself to death while writing. Scarier still, I've just taken off my cap to find I’ve been left with a hairstyle reminiscent of Dido in her early-00s heyday.

Me, holding a copy of The Times, featuring an article with the headline ‘Rereading: The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark’. My hair is flicking out to the side.

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The Booker Prizes @thebookerprizes.com · 31/07/2026

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams offers a new kind of love story for a broken era, coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision. Find out more about this Booker Prize 2026-longlisted book: thebookerprizes.pulse.ly/ufvetqhdhk @4thestatebooks.bsky.social

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Here’s something - LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK has been chosen as one of The Times’ best books to read this summer. So that’s nice, isn’t it!

The best books to read this summer
Novels, memoirs and history, paperbacks and hardbacks — plus something for the children. Here's our guide to this summer's finest reads. Use the save button to create your own reading list

Muriel Spark is unusual among modern writers in having had two recent (and first-class) biographies about her. Last year was Frances Wilson's excellent Electric Spark, which focused on her early life and career (it's particularly strong on the awful, groping beta-talents she endured running the Poetry Society). James Bailey's book covers her whole life, or rather nine lives. She was a shape-shifting, slippery character, a woman of many parts (a wartime black propagandist, a high-spending grande dame in Rome, a poverty-stricken single mother, a religious convert). A witty, stylish read that does justice to one of British fiction's most original talents.

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

it's UK paperback day for Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil (an unusual fantasy novel) so now you can break the back of it, sling it in a bag, read it on a train like green eggs and ham. it won't complain like a hardback, you want to fold a corner, you go for it www.waterstones.com/book/isabell...

the cover of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, a fantasy with goblins climbing the walls, held in front of what I believe to be a lavender plant, but I'm not a botanist, it could very well be something more nefarious. it's purple. so. make what you will of that.

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

i think about this all the time, but pratchett published 3 flops before he even /started/ discworld, the first two of which are considered a bit rough around the edges, and then (having been given time and money to hone his craft) he writes about 20 masterpieces in a row

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Our Culture @ourculture.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Author Spotlight: Missouri Williams, ‘The Vivisectors’ ourculturemag.com/2026/05/25/author…

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D.D. Miriade @ddmiriade.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

The Devil and Mrs. Gooch by Oliver Darkshire is one of those wonderfully clever novels where a line slips past you at first, your brain catches up a second later, and suddenly you’re laughing out loud. It’s delightfully unusual and strange in the best way. #booksky

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

novel release day! The Devil and Mrs Gooch is in bookstores. and under your bed. if you like giant evil businesswomen with the attitude of a snowplough, little furry demon guys, mysteriously french undead concierges, or pigs who can sew, i wrote this for you 📖🔗: wwnorton.com/books/978132...

my bookshelf, with a copy of The Devil and Mrs Gooch, feat. the eponymous Gwendolyn Gooch who has the goatlike Devil in a leash and collar by her feet

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

my new book, THE DEVIL AND MRS GOOCH, is out tomorrow and as an author in 2026 I have only two options, Success (complete genre hegemony) or Failure (anything else), so please remember when they hunger games all the writers that I tried 📖🔗: wwnorton.com/books/978132...

the cover for The Devil and Mrs Gooch, in which she has him by the collar (bless his little goatlike hooves). snippets from reviews say things like "it was actually quite funny" or "my brain temporarily froze"

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

It's US paperback day for Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil! My grotty, half-mad, confusing little fantasy novel which has led people to email me asking what the ending means, an element I will not be explaining because the book is in fact the explanation

it's the cover of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil. there's a note underneath with a joke on it but it's quite wordy, not funny enough to repeat, and my fingers are tired

A page from Isabella Nagg "A Spell of Finding" which again is quite long and I promise you no-one else is reading it so you aren't missing out

a mostly blank page announcing an excerpt from The Devil and Mrs Gooch

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

My book, LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK, is out today!

Selfie, in which I am holding up a copy of my book, Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark is BOOK OF THE WEEK in The Times, and it's frankly outrageous that a small marching band hasn't trundled into my house to make some little celebratory parps in my honour 😤

A photo of me, holding up a copy of The Times which features a review of my book, accompanied by the headline: ‘A genius with claws - the picaresque life of Muriel Spark’

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Lovely review of LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK in The Scotsman, which picks up on everything I wanted the book to be: 🐈‍⬛ The opposite of a dry, door-stopper biography 🐈‍⬛ Genre-agnostic 🐈‍⬛ Full of mystery ‘A shapeshifting biography for a shapeshifting subject' - dreamy!

For someone who wrote biographies of writers early on in her career, Muriel Spark grew to be suspicious of the genre. As she warned American academic Dorothea Walker in 1988, "A number of biographical pieces already written about me are completely wrong, sometimes pure inventions."

In his new book about Spark ("as sly, nimble and elegant as her own work" claims his publisher, raising the bar ridiculously high), James Bailey consigns biography's normal rules to the footnotes and opts for inventiveness instead. So here, for example, is the the young Muriel, playing with her two dolls, Red Rosie and Queen, at her family's dining table: "Delicately, Muriel tilts an empty teacup to Queenie's closed lips, signifying the doll's frosty contempt for her jealous companion." Or here she is again, this time aged 39 and writing The Comforters, and he imagines her opening a bottle sent to her by Graham Greene, "she might have tilted the glass this way and that, watching as the wine took on the curves and contours of its new vessel: one shape becoming another."
What can one say? She might have done both these things. Then again, she might not. Does it matter? It would if Bailey had completely made up his facts, but he hasn't: he is being inventive not inventing. Graham Greene did indeed send Spark money along with cases of wine when she was at her lowest ebb in the mid-1950s (on condition that she didn't pray for him), and her dolls Red Rosie and Queenie made their literary debut in Spark's 1992 memoir Curriculum Vitae.
READ MORE: Nocturnes by Susan Tomes review: 'ingenious and astute'
These are, of course, the tiniest details in a spectacularly large life whose story is, as Bailey notes "every bit as strange, slippery and rife with contradictions as those she wrote", and which ranges from a happy Edinburgh childhood to marital misery in Rhodesia to black propaganda work in wartime London to literary superstardom in New York, and a contented old age in a Tuscan rectory. In telling it, Bailey's approach isn't a conventional "life" so much as a hybrid of literary criticism, personal appreciation and a novel ("A late summer evening. St John's Wood at sunset. A London sky the hue of a bloodshot eye. She walks slowly, several steps behind the woman she met on the…

Provided it is properly researched - which, with its 25-page bibliography Bailey's book certainly is, even if Dan Gunn's excellent Letters of Muriel Spark Vol 1 arrived too late last year to make the cut - I have no problem with this. There's no reason a shapeshifting author shouldn't have a shapeshifting book written about her. No reason it shouldn't zoom forwards and back across her life at whiplash speed, because that is the way our minds work and the way Spark's fiction did too. It might even, 20 years after her death (the actual anniversary is 13 April spread the word to a more literature-averse generation.
READ MORE: The Edge of Revolution by David Torrance review: 'balanced and solidly researched'
Last year, in her wildly apophenic biography Electric Spark, Frances Wilson wrote about how she "felt, on every page, her control of my hand" as she tried to puzzle out the convoluted paths of Spark's fiction and (in the words of her book's blurb)
"crack her code". Bailey, by contrast, both delights in and accepts Spark's elusiveness. "Just when we think we have the measure of her," he writes, "she slinks out of sight. She reemerges with a new way of writing from a desk in another part of the world... It is this lifelong slipperiness, this sense of perpetual reinvention that I seek to capture."
By and large he does, though I don't think he would object if I gave the last word to Dame Muriel. "There's nothing I can tell the public about my life that can clarify my books," she once told Harding Lemay, her US editor at Knopf, when he asked her for publicity material. "It's rather the books that clarify my life."
Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, by James Bailey, Sceptre,

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Really big news! Author copies of my book are here, and they're gorgeous. The colours! The chunkiness! The big glossy cat on the front! LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK is out in 2 weeks. Go pre-order it; it'll make a beautiful addition to your living space. I’m just saying…

Selfie of me, holding a copy of Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark. Book cover is orange-red with a picture of Muriel Spark holding a black cat.

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Drew Broussard @drewsof.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

This book rules, I need you all to buy it and read it (and ISABELLA NAGG while you're at it) so that Oliver's publisher(s) continues to offer him money for more books in the series, as it should by all rights/in a just world become a book-a-year-ish millennial's Discworldesque.

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Lynne M. Meyer | coffee-fueled and available for hire @lynnemeyer.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I just finished an ARC of The Devil and Mrs Gooch, and let me tell you: It’s INCREDIBLE. If you’re a fan of the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, this book is definitely going to be your jam. Longer review coming soon! #BookSky 💙📚

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Matthew @fineplan.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Darkshire's THE DEVIL AND MRS GOOCH revisits the world of Isabella Nagg, taking evil businesswoman Gooch to the city for a scheme involving kidnapped hobs, predatory rental practices, and a lovestruck Devil. Complete with copious footnotes and marginalia from a set of Household Gramarye. 🤩 #ewgc

The Devil and Mrs. Gooch:
A Novel

Oliver Darkshire

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Publishers Weekly @publisherswkly.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

In the hypnotic sophomore outing from Missouri Williams, a professor’s personal assistant gets drawn into a strange triangle with her boss and a male student. It’s a singular and arresting work. @MCDBooks buff.ly/DcCmbZP

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

The very brilliant @robinince.bsky.social has been saying some kind things about Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark 🐈‍⬛ Go on, treat yourself to a copy: lnk.to/LikeaCatLove... (glass of red not included, alas)

A picture taken from Robin Ince’s Instagram stories. Picture is of my book, Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, and is accompanied by the text ‘utterly wonderful biography of Spark’

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John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

‘Anyway, if anyone out there is having similar dreams, just let me know! I’d love to hear from you at Altman@OpenAI.com. I’m really just curious how many people out there have these dreams and how often you’re seeing the wandering masses who scream at you to “help us, help us, for God’s sake”?’

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John Self @john-self.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

"What is it that makes some books stick in the mind while others drift into vague memory? One factor must be a unique, strong concept. And so it is with Eradication, or as I think of it, the one about a man on an island with 4,000 goats and a gun." Me on Jonathan Miles's springy, visceral novel:

thetimes.com

One man on an island — plus 4,000 goats and a gun

In Jonathan Miles’s dark comedy Eradication, things go awry for a mysterious man on a pest control mission. It’s not often you wish a novel was longer

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

bookstore chains are hibernating in february, you must seize advantage of their weakness and raid their caves before they grow strong again in the summer months and begin hunting livestock near the mountain villages www.waterstones.com/book/isabell...

waterstones.com

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire | Waterstones

Buy Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

the UK paperback for Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, which some people have called "why" and "a fantasy book? I thought I raised a doctor or a lawyer" and "I only like the talking donkey, the rest is garbage" is out in paperback in june! and today it's 25% off (link ⬇️)

screengrab from waterstones UK for Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

I’m taking my book on a little tour! Come and see me talk all things LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK. There'll be gossip, jokes and cat anecdotes. And once I'm through with those I'll start talking about the book. There’s a link for tickets in my bio. Hope to see you! 🐈‍⬛

Book tour dates for Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark

16 APRIL
Blackwell's, Manchester with Jenn Ashworth
21 APRIL
Hatchards Piccadilly, London with Sophie Haydock
23 APRIL
Topping & Co Booksellers,
Edinburgh
27 APRIL
Blackwells, Oxford with Francesca Wade
12 MAY
Urmsion Bookshop

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Karolina Sutton @karolinasutton.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

How I became an agent, in praise of working for the best in the industry and what publishing could do better www.bookbrunch.co.uk/page/free-ar...

bookbrunch.co.uk

Free Article

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Karolina Sutton @karolinasutton.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

The Sunday Times on the crisis in non-fiction - we lost 17million non-fiction book sales in just over half a decade - with some good contributions from Mark Richards and my colleague John Ash. A) we have been here before B) non-fiction needs to be the best it’s been www.thetimes.com/article/d1be...

thetimes.com

There’s a crisis in non-fiction book sales. What’s to blame?

We’re buying 17 million fewer factual books than six years ago. Is the rise of podcasts to blame? Or publishers’ obsession with celebrities and influencers?

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Steph Cherrywell @stephcherrywell.com · 07/02/2026

This by @deathbybadger.bsky.social is great and the best part is, okay, Pratchetty Footnote Humor aside the actual plot is super grim, but the VILLAIN is this amazing Varrick-esque "shows up in every episode with a different get-rich-quick scheme" elven con artist and she's fantastic and I love her.

The cover of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire. It's one of those 'is it a vase or two faces' vases, with some basil, an apple, and something that looks like a cat (not actually a cat) in it.

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Jill Minor @jillsreads.com · 05/02/2026

Hooting and snorting my way through THE DEVIL AND MRS GOOCH by @deathbybadger.bsky.social (second in the "Household Gramarye" series). The footnotes! The ARC courtesy of @wwnortonlibrary.bsky.social was just what I needed. #ewgc

A blonde in a red dress has a small devil on a gold collar and chain and is holding one horn. Household Gramarye Book 2 The Devil and Mrs. Gooch a Novel Oliver Darkshire Author of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil

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Héctor Barros 🏳️‍🌈 (he/him) @snibbits.eurosky.social · 04/02/2026

If you haven't read it yet, get Isabella Nagg And The Pot Of Basil by @deathbybadger.bsky.social right now and get on with it. A hilarious and heartfelt book about power, loss and the dangers of unbridled capitalism, among many other things (like the dangers of garden gnomes)

Cover of the book Isabella Nagg and the pot of basil, by Oliver Darkshire

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Chris Power @chrispower.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Fonts in conversation. A new series (probably 1 of 1).

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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 10/01/2026

In Opinion “We definitely have an attention problem, but it’s not just a function of the digital technology that pings and beeps and flashes and nudges us ever closer to despair,” write D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt. “It starts with the way we think about attention.”

nyti.ms

Opinion | The ‘Attention Economy’ Is a Lie

It started in a laboratory. No one could have predicted where it would end.

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James Bailey @drjamesbailey.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Well here’s something: the BBC has included LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK in a round-up of the must-reads of 2026. I’m sandwiched between Liza Minnelli and Cher - a big camp old Merry Christmas to me! ✨

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Damn, Missouri Wiliams' The Vivisectors is great so far. Out in May.

Missouri Wiliams' The Vivisectors with title at top and author name lower down with lines between the two, in gray against black background and still life with hand and cut fruit plus cherries at bottom.

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Isabella Nagg spotted at a bookstore in Millerton: "a messed up fairy tale that's kind of like if Roald Dahl and Terry Pratchett went through a washing machine and the colours all ran" 🧐 maybe this person should be the writer

a copy of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, on a shelf in a bookstore with a bookseller note attached

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Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

woof. and that's an (extremely ratty) finished book draft. now all I have to do is write it again but better before I can even start thinking about selling it 🫩

a typewritten manuscript on a desk, working title "I Am No Bird", book Three of the Household Gramarye by Oliver Darkshire

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Samantha (Samanthahalf) @samanthalf.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Absolutely loved @deathbybadger.bsky.social's debut novel, Isabella Nagg & the Pot of Basil. I guess the best desc of it rn is cosy fantasy? In that there's a cottage and a village and wizardry? But it's cosy f in the same way that Pratchett is high f. All the elements, there but it's much more.

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