Shropshire bookshops set for rush by Harper Lee fans
It is one of the most anticipated book launches in decades – and bookshops across Shropshire and Mid Wales are opening up early to deal with the rush.
Parties and film screenings are also being planned to celebrate the release of the highly-anticipated sequel to the classic To Kill a Mockingbird.
Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman goes on sale on Tuesday and shops have been inundated with orders for the book.
Waterstones' shops in Shrewsbury and Telford will be opening an hour early at 8am as staff deal with the orders.
Tim Arblaster, manager of the shop in High Street, Shrewsbury, said: "It's been our biggest pre-order of the year, both in Shrewsbury and nationally. It's going to be our biggest fiction total of the year.
"We've had about 100 orders and that keeps on going up. We will have some American treats available, some popcorn and root beer and so on, to give a flavour of the American Deep South.
"Towards the end of the month, at 6pm on Wednesday the 29th, we'll have a reading group about the book as well, so people can buy the book, read it and then come and discuss it. Anyone is welcome to come."
Janice Hume, manager of the Telford shop, said they have taken many online orders. She added: "We're expecting a busy day. We expect quite a lot of excitement and lots of people have been chatting about the book."
Independent book shops will be organising film screenings of the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck, to tie in with the sequel going on sale.
Pengwern Books in Shrewsbury, Castle Bookshop in Ludlow, Booka in Oswestry, and Art & Artisan Books in Bishop's Castle will all be holding film screenings over the next week to allow readers a quick catch-up on the events leading to the story in Go Set a Watchman.
Screenings will take place in Oswestry and in Shrewsbury on Tuesday at 7pm. The screening at The Hive, Belmont, will be free although donations are appreciated, and refreshments will be served. Tickets for Kinokulture Cinema in Oswestry cost £20 which includes a copy of Go Set a Watchman.
One person who will not be taking part in the celebrations, however, is the author herself. Lee, 89, lives quietly in the Meadows care home in her home town of Monroeville, Alabama. She is almost blind and deaf after a stroke in 2007 and sees only close friends.
Go Set a Watchman sees Scout, the young heroine of the first book, return after 20 years to the town of Maycomb in the American south to visit Atticus Finch, her lawyer father. Originally written in the mid 1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird.
Thought to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
