Category: Events

Someonewith a very dark past is living under a new identity in the small seaside town of   Flinstead-on-Sea…

Local debut writer Lesley Kara’s forthcomingthriller The Rumour is already making waves and the settingis disturbingly familiar.

“Keeps you guessing until the final page,”  Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train.

The Rumour was published on 27th December 2018

To find out all about it. sign up for the exclusive local launch event with Lesley on

 Tuesday 15th January 2019 from 6pm – 7.30pm – NOW at McGrigor Hall

 

To celebrate Independent Bookshop Week

Come and hear about

Oggy Boytchev’s

 latest book…a vivid & highly original novel

THE UNBELIEVER

 

 

Tuesday 19^th June at McGrigor Hall 7.30pm

Tickets £5 with 10% off Oggy’s book.  There will be a pay bar.

Oggy Boytchev escaped from behind the Iron Curtain in 1986. Soon after, he joined the BBC in London where he spent the next 25 years covering international conflicts.  Latterly, he became John Simpson’s producer and accompanied him on dangerous undercover assignments around the world.

The Unbeliever is a panorama of Cold War paranoia and intrigue spanning four decades, told through the life of one extraordinary – and real – spy.  A story of love, loyalty, ambition and betrayal, it is a gripping and inventive historical novel, perfect for fans of John le Carré.

Then join us at our Annual Garden Party  

with TWO Brilliant Bloomsbury Authors

TOR UDALL &

CHARLES ELTON

Friday 22^nd June at 6.30pm

Tickets £15 to include your choice of book, a glass of prosecco & canapés.  A pay bar will also be available.

 

After studying theatre and film, Tor co-founded a dance-theatre company and spent most of her twenties directing, writing and performing.

She then went on to teach drama for several years and choreographed an opera for The Royal College of Music.

A Thousand Paper Birds is her first novel.

 

Charles Elton was a director of the literary agency Curtis Brown before becoming an independent TV producer, then joining ITV. He left in 2010 when his bestselling novel Mr Toppit, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick, was published.  The Songs is his second novel.

To find out more about the books, please go to our Bookshop page.

 

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that award-winning poet and novelist

Jill Dawson

will be joining us to talk about her recent novel

The Crime Writer based on Patricia Highsmith’s A Suspension of Mercy,

together with two of her previous acclaimed novels:

The Great Lover and Fred & Edie and Watch Me Disappear

Wednesday 23^rd May at 7pm

Walton & Frinton Yacht Club

Tickets £15 to include wine, canapés and one of Jill’s novels.

Jill Dawson was born in Durham, and as a child lived in Essex and Yorkshire, then Staffordshire. She read American Studies at the University of Nottingham, before moving to London in 1983. A year later she won both first prize in City Limits short story competition, and first prize in the Hackney New Writers Poetry competition. In 2006 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Anglia Ruskin University, in recognition of her ‘exceptional giftedness’ as a writer, and her mentoring work with emerging writers.

Fred & Edie is based on the historic murder trial of Thompson and Bywaters, and was shortlisted for both the 2000 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2001 Orange Prize for Fiction, and voted one of 50 essential novels by a living author. The Great Lover was a best-seller and Richard and Judy Summer Read in 2009 and Watch Me Disappear was long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2006.

For more information about the books, please see our Events page.

EDUCATED by Tara Westover

Friday 13th April at

Oasis Café from 3-4pm

Tickets £5 to include Tea & Cake and £2 off the book.

“[A] superb memoir… Westover’s journey from a remote corner of the American west to one of the world’s grandest seats of learning is extraordinary . . . Her story, of fighting to be herself, is as old as the hills she came from, but Westover gives us such a fresh, absorbing take that it deserves to bring her own private Idaho into the bestseller lists, book groups and, eventually, cinemas.” (The Times)

EDUCATED is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes with the severing of the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, from her singular experience Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

For more information about the book , please click on our Bookshop page.

Wednesday 28th March  2018

McGrigor Hall at 8.00pm

Tickets £5 with 10% off the book.

There will be a pay bar.

Ken Porter was born in Laindon in 1944. He is a leading enthusiast in the Basildon Borough Heritage Group and Laindon and District Community Archive and gives talks to local societies. Ken’s interest in the First World War began with the discovery of his maternal grandfather’s involvement in, and injury at, the Battle of the Somme on the first day tanks were used. Ken’s interest in the Clacton area stems from a childhood spent there.

This book gives a brief history of the major nearby villages Brightlingsea, St Oysths, Clacton on Sea, Holland on Sea, Frinton and Walton on the Naze as they developed from agricultural areas, to seaside resorts in the mid to late 1800s, and then into heavily defended hives of activity.

The local villages produced a considerable number of men who were awarded the Military Medal/Cross, and Walton on the Naze produced one VC in Herbert Columbine. The tremendous efforts of others are also covered, in particular those of the local women folk. A number of appropriate poems, many written at the time, are included throughout the book, as well as rarely seen photographs and insightful reports from the local papers of that period.

Do join us for this fascinating evening of local history.

We are delighted to welcome local author

Vanessa Streete who will be signing her debut novel Like China in the shop on

Saturday 17th March from 11am – 12.30pm.

Dobson, just one of those names anyone who’s anyone in London knows. Elizabeth and her brother James have it all – the clubs, the money, the high life, but after the sudden death of their parents the only thing they really have is each other, and that’s the way they’re both determined things are going to stay. With help from Michael, James’ best friend, it’s the way it stays for a while, but time and the violent side of their nocturnal profession are against them at every turn. There are people so desperate to take it all away that they will go to any lengths to get what they want and that includes Elizabeth’s innocence, but Michael has other plans for her on that score and he fights at James’ side to protect her, painfully living the lie of brotherly pretense that has kept his shameful secret from even himself for so long. This is the original fight for a really deep love, the original battle between good and evil, and the honest truth about love and loss and love again.

The book is priced at £10.99 and Ness will be happy to sign the book for you.

Introducing Luke Allnutt and We Own the Sky

Luke Allnutt started writing WE OWN THE SKY while going through chemotherapy; as he wanted to create something for the people he loved. He said: “All the emotion I felt from losing my father, fearing that I wouldn’t be around to watch my sons grow up, went into creating this family — Rob, Anna, and Jack — that I loved and cared about so much. I suppose the book was really a love note to my own family. It explores how people facing an unimaginable loss manage to survive, how their love for each other can endure against all odds.”

Luke was picked up off the slushpile and landed a million pound international deal! It is your classic rags to riches slushpile miracle, so do come and meet him on Wednesday 28th February at 6.30pm. 

Tickets are £5 which includes a glass of prosecco and canapés.

For more information about the book – please see our Events page.

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‘Thrilling, transporting, delicately realised and held together by a sophisticated sense of suspense…more than matches the power of Fuller’s debut… Powerful, pleasing and pleasurable.’ Sunday Times

On Friday 15th December from 6-7pm we will be sharing a festive glass with author

Paul Kerensa

who will be signing his latest book

HARK! The Biography of Christmas

We will also be offering 10% off all book purchases to help you complete your Christmas shopping.

We do hope you can join us!

Paul is an award-winning writer of TV, radio, books and his own stand-up comedy, which he still performs twice or thrice a week. He’s part of the British Comedy Award-winning writing team for BBC’s Miranda, the Rose d-Or Award-winning writing team for BBC1’s Not Going Out, he’s written for cult shows like C4’s TFI Friday and BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show and Dead Ringers, as well as mainstream hits like BBC’s Top Gear, Buble at the BBC and the BBC Music Awards.

 

In this delightful sleigh ride through Christmas history, Paul Kerensa answers the festive questions you never thought to ask. . . Did Cromwell help shape the mince pie? Was St Nicholas the first to use an automatic door? Which classic Christmas crooners were inspired by a Hollywood heatwave? And did King Herod really have a wife called Doris? Whether you mull on wine or enjoy the biggest turkey, the biggest tree or the biggest credit card bill, unwrap your story through our twelve dates of Christmas past. From Roman revelry to singing Bing, via Santa, Scrooge and a snoozing saviour, this timeless tale is perfect trivia fodder for the Christmas dinner table.