About

Mr B's Emporium is very excited to welcome travel writer and friend-of-the-shop Dan Richards back to Mr B's to talk about his new book, Overnight.

A celebration of nighttime, Overnight finds Dan exploring the lives of those who exist after dark. From bakers and broadcasters, to bats and the stars above, on trains and ships and on foot, these moving and personal stories of night dwellers will make you look at the darkness anew.

Dan is previously the author of Outpost and Climbing Days, as well as co-author of Holloway with Robert MacFarlane and Stanley Donwood.

About the book:

There is something special about the night. For many, just the idea of it conjures thoughts of starlit skies, romance, refuge, of being tucked up in bed. For some, the night means fear, vulnerability, danger, sleeplessness.

At night things go bump, monsters hide under beds, owls take wing and foxes prowl. For others still, nightfall signals the start of work. Overnight is a celebration of all things nocturnal, of those who labour while the rest of us sleep: the bakers, health workers, sailors, couriers, broadcasters, drivers, fishers, the emergency services and more.

And it is also a hymn to nighttime wildlife, dreams and art. We'll hang out with bats and look at the stars. We'll learn what Moomintroll has to teach us.

We'll travel by ship, train, racing car and foot. There will be more than one surprise along the way. Through a series of personal journeys Dan Richards explores what the night means to a fascinating array of people, taking us from night terrors to the glow of watching the dawn break on the summer solstice.

Overnight will change the way you think about the hours after dark.

'In Overnight, Dan Richards introduces us to the shadowy, starlit world of postal workers, night nurses, twenty-four-hour industry, late night radio, search and rescue. We meet desperate rough sleepers, racing demons, new mothers . . . and what shines through most clearly is the humour and the pathos, the remarkable diversity in what it means to live, to work, to love. A lucid dream of a book, one that will keep you up late reading' – CAL FLYN

'The height of crafted eloquence' – SAMANTHA HARVEY

'A revelatory journey into the teeming life of the night. Moving, engrossing, essential' – KATHERINE MAY