Manchester Gliterary Lunch, 14th May 2026

Body of Lies
Jo Callaghan

The Author

 Jo Callaghan works as a senior strategist, carrying out research into the future impact of AI and geonomics on the workforce. After losing her husband to cancer in 2019, she started writing. In the Blink of an Eye (2023), her debut crime novel, was a BBC Two’s Between the Covers pick, Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Sunday Times bestseller and won numerous awards. To date it has been published in over fifteen different countries and is currently in development for the screen with Neal Street Productions. Jo lives in the Midlands. 

The Book

 Human suspicion. AI manipulation. Who can you trust when truth has no meaning?  On the night of Halloween a local MP is found murdered, with a taunting message written in binary code that seems to target DCS Kat Frank specifically: Catch me if you can. The victim’s anti-AI sentiments suggest a political motive, and as Kat investigates with her partner AIDE Lock – the world’s first AI detective – she finds herself once again battling her own prejudices about the technological future he represents.

But when a cyberattack takes out the National Grid, Kat and Lock have to race against the clock to track down the hacker. Tangled in a web of suspicion and deception, Kat must choose who and what to believe when the truth seems to defy both instinct and logic. Can she set aside her old doubts and put her faith in her AI partner one last time? Or will this case send Lock down a path she just can’t follow?

Praise for Jo Callaghan

“Entertaining and thought-provoking novel… Callaghan grounds her novel in real life…. The moral dilemmas created by artificial intelligence are brilliantly explored in this altogether very human novel.” Sunday Times

No Such Thing as Monday
Siân Hughes

The Author

Siân Hughes is a writer who grew up in a small village in Cheshire. Her first collection of poetry The Missing was a Poetry Society Recommendation, longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, shortlisted for the Felix Dennis and the Aldeburgh prizes, and won the Seamus Heaney Award.

Siân’s first novel Pearl was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2023 and shortlisted for The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2024.

The Book

Steffie spends her days working in a dry-cleaner’s, trying to scrub the world clean one garment at a time.  But no matter how spotless the clothes, she can’t rid herself of the guilt and grime she feels inside.

Haunted by what happened to her sister when they were children, large fragments of which she can’t fully remember, Steffie is stuck in a loop of self-destruction, defiance, and shame. When her violent, bullying father dies suddenly, it sparks a reckoning that cracks open her past.

What follows is an unexpectedly redemptive journey of a woman trying to piece herself together in a world that failed to make space for her.

Raw, exhilarating, and full of heart, No Such Thing As Monday confirms Siân Hughes as a masterful chronicler of life lived on the edge, and people at their most vulnerable.

Praise for Siân Hughes

“A stunningly frank and darkly funny novel… I loved it.” — Bonnie Garmus