About Reading Lamp Press
A small independent press for the kind of book you read under a lamp while the rest of the house is asleep.
Reading Lamp Press is a small independent publisher based in the Netherlands. We publish atmospheric fiction in English: the kind of book you read in a pool of warm light, late, with a cup of something going cold beside you.
We have three shelves.
Classic mysteries. The Étienne Vallon novels by Lucien Marrec take place in the ports and river towns of northern France in 1935 and 1936: fog, barges, strikes, insurance claims that don’t add up, and a detective who will not write down a comfortable lie.
British comedy. The Toby & Doris capers by Percy Applegarth are set in the England of 1968, among forged paintings, country houses and holiday camps, and they are meant to make you laugh out loud on the train.
Quiet, piercing novels. R. M. Calder writes about people the modern world has put in new kinds of trouble: a widow courted online by a man who does not exist, a translator who talks every night to a voice that always answers, a carer living in a stranger’s house on the Italian coast.
Behind the books there is also a Journal: articles about the real subjects our novels touch, from romance scams to the lives of live-in carers, from 1930s France to the England of 1968.
How we work
We are a very small press, and we use modern tools openly. You can read how our books are made, and what part AI plays in it, on How we make our books.
Say hello
We are on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. For anything else, see Contact.