Literary Calendar

It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained for months, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back. Read all reviews for Instructions For a Heatwave Maggie O`Farrell is the author of five previous novels: After You`d Gone; My Lover`s Lover; The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox; and The Hand That First Held Mine,which won the 2010 Costa&hellip

Salley Vickers is the author of the word-of-mouth bestseller Miss Garnet’s Angel and several other bestselling novels including Mr Golightly’s Holiday, The Other Side of You and Dancing Backwards as well as a collection of short stories Aphrodite’s Hat. She has worked as a cleaner, a dancer, a university teacher of literature and a psychoanalyst. She is currently a RLF fellow at Newnham College Cambridge and she divides her time between Cambridge and London. Melissa Katsoulis is the author of Telling Tales: A&hellip

Three of our best contemporary thriller writers discuss their craft with crime fiction critic Peter Guttridge. The Carrier is a compulsive puzzle of a novel from Sophie Hannah that has you hooked from the very first page, Sabine Durrant’s Under Your Skin is an unpredictable, exquisitely twisty story, which proves that you should assume nothing, believe no one and check everything, while Christopher Fowler’s latest novel, Bryant & May and The Invisible Code won the eDUNNIT Crimefest Award and is shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the&hellip

The Story features two centuries of women’s short fiction, ranging from established Queens of the short story like Alice Munro and Angela Carter, to contemporary rising stars like Miranda July, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie and Helen Simpson. Handpicked by one of the nation’s favourite novelists, Victoria Hislop – herself a great writer of, and champion for, short stories – and divided thematically into collections on love, loss and the lives of women, there’s a story for every mood, mind-set and moment in&hellip

Hilary Boyd’s first ‘gran lit’ novel, Thursdays In The Park, was published last year and has since sold over 400,000 copies in ebook and print. She has worked as a nurse, a marriage guidance counsellor and a health journalist and published six non-fiction books on health-related subjects such as step-parenting, depression and pregnancy. Gill Hornby is a writer and journalist. She lives with her husband, Robert Harris, and their four children in Kintbury, Berkshire. The Hive is her first novel. Lisa Jewell had always planned to write&hellip

Bestselling novelist Daisy Waugh discusses her new novel, Melting the Snow on Hester Street, with fellow novelist Rachel Hore. Bestselling writer Daisy Waugh discusses her new book with fellow novelist Rachel Hore. Set in Hollywood in 1929, Waugh’s Melting the Snow on Hester Street follows a high-society couple, an actor and actress, on the brink of bankruptcy and divorce. Hore’s The Silent Tide connects the different worlds of two young women, who through their individual quests become inextricably linked. Bestselling writer Daisy Waugh discusses her new book with&hellip

Members of the Crime Writers’ Association, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, talk about their love of short crime fiction – is the short story’s resurgence really such a mystery? This is part of the Highgate & Hampstead Literary Festival. More information/book tickets