An award-winning North East bookshop is to open a second site on a trendy shopping street - thanks in part to pestering from one of the region鈥檚 best known authors.
Forum Books has won legions of fans since opening in Corbridge in 2011, being named independent bookshop of the year in the North and bringing together its children and adult bookshops into a converted chapel in 2018.
Now Forum is putting the finishing touches to a new store called the bound on Whitley Bay鈥檚 Park View, a street once included in a list of the 10 coolest shopping areas in the world.
Owner Helen Stanton has revealed that pressure from Vera author Ann Cleeves - who lives in Whitley Bay and has done a number of readings at Forum Books - helped persuade her to open at the coast.
She said: 鈥淲e鈥檝e been working on the plan for a couple of years but we put it on pause this time last year. The shop became available last year and we thought that if we didn鈥檛 do it, we鈥檇 end up regretting it.
鈥淲e got the keys at the end of last year and we鈥檝e been doing the refit during lockdown, which has been challenging.
鈥淎 lot of people come to us in Corbridge from the coast. Plenty of them have tried to persuade us to come to Whitley Bay, including Ann Cleves, who鈥檚 a great supporter of ours and has been nagging us about it.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been operating online and can see the Whitley Bay postcode popping up all the time on orders. That鈥檚 quite reassuring.
鈥淲e wouldn鈥檛 be anywhere without our customers鈥 support and in the last 12 months, that鈥檚 been amazing. We feel really heartened that people like what we do and they鈥檒l hopefully support the new store.鈥
Forum Books is currently finalising arrangements to open its Corbridge bookshop when non-essential retail is allowed to re-open on April 12. The new store in North Tyneside will follow a few weeks after that.
During lockdown, the shop has relied on its online retail operation, as well as tapping into readings and other events organised by a network of independent bookstores around the 海角视频.
