Gliterary Lunches - Food For Thought

Corrag
by Susan Fletcher

The Author

Susan Fletcher was born in 1979 in Birmingham. She studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and lives in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her first novel, Eve Green won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Betty Trask Prize and Author's Club Best First Novel Award. Her second novel Oystercatchers was published in 2007 to great acclaim.

In Corrag, Susan Fletcher tells us the story of an epic historic Scottish event, the Massacre at Glencoe, and the unexpected but profound relationships that can come from the most unlikely circumstances.

Praise for Susan Fletcher

'Her prose is extraordinarily lyrical: haunted, dreamlike and precise, reminiscent at times of Sylvia Plath…Fletcher's words are undeniably beautiful and her themes are profound.'
Sunday Times

The Plot

Thirty-seven members of the Macdonald clan were killed by government troops at The Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. Many more died from exposure in the mountains.

Thirty miles to the north a young woman is accused of involvement in the massacre, and of witchcraft. She is imprisoned and sentenced to death. Charles Leslie, an Irish Jacobite, hears of the Massacre comes to the tolbooth to question Corrag. He seeks any information that will condemn the Protestant King William, rumored to be involved in the massacre, and reinstate the Catholic James.

Corrag - lonesome and resentful - agrees to talk to him in an effort to clear her name and bring the guilty to justice. She sees Leslie as someone to talk to in her last few days. As she tells her story, Leslie's attachment to Corrag grows, and slowly a true friendship develops.

A Room Swept White
by Sophie Hannah

The Author

Following the success and critical acclaim of Little Face, Hurting Distance, the Point of Rescue and The Other Half Lives, this is Sophie Hannah's fifth psychological thriller. As an award-winning short story writer and poet, her work is studied at school and degree level across the UK and she has been a fellow at both Cambridge and Oxford. Sophie lives in Yorkshire with her young family.

She is an excellent speaker. Her sharp wit is in stark contrast to her dark writing and she is a regular speaker at Gliterary Lunches where she is always warmly received.

Praise for Sophie Hannah

'Absorbingly chilling, this is a tale that steadily builds in tension, throwing up twists and turns that keep you guessing right up until the very end'
SHE

The Plot

TV producer Fliss Benson receives an anonymous card at work. The card has sixteen numbers on it that mean nothing to her. On the same day she finds out she's going to be working on a documentary about miscarriages of justice involving cot death mothers wrongly accused of murder. The documentary will focus on three women, all of whom are now free, and the doctor who did her best to send them to prison for life, along with a child protection zealot under investigation for misconduct. For reasons she has shared with nobody, this is the last project Fliss wants to be working on. And then Helen Yardley is found dead at her home, and in her pocket is a card - with sixteen numbers on it…