Scotland’s renowned The Bookshop Band is touring some of the finest bookstores and libraries across the USA with its repertoire of songs inspired by literature. Folk duo Ben Please and Beth Porter perform across the UK and Europe – and have frequently appeared on stage with the famous writers whose work they sing about. The three-week US tour comes after literary critic Dwight Garner issued a challenge in the The New York Times where he wrote: “The Bookshop Band is not just good but achingly good … If America’s independent booksellers can’t figure a way to get these two … to tour America, they’re doing something wrong.” The American Booksellers’ Association (ABA) responded in style by inviting the band to perform for its members at its Winter Institute this month in Albuquerque. They will also play at 15 independent bookshops and two public libraries in New York, New Jersey, New Mexico and Colorado. Audiences can expect to hear songs about everything from The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and Shakespeare’s Richard II to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies. There’s also a good chance that they will perform one of the songs they were commissioned to write for the launch of Philip Pullman’s work The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage.