Edinburgh December Gliterary Lunch with Louise Doughty and Jean Kwok

A Bird in Winter
Louise Doughty

The Author

Louise Doughty’s novels include Platform Seven, recently filed for ITV; Black Water, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; the bestseller Apple Tree Yard (over half a million copies sold), which was adapted for BBC One; and Whatever You Love, nominated for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for fiction.  She has been nominated for many other prizes including the Sunday Times Short Story Prize and the CWA Silver Dagger, along with creating and writing the hit BBC drama Crossfire.  Her work has been translated into thirty languages.  She lives in London.

(image credit:  Max Kennedy)

The Book

Bird is a woman on the run.  One minute, she’s in a meeting in her office in Birmingham – the next, she’s walking out on her job, her home, her life.

It’s a day she thought might come, and one she has organised herself for – but nothing could prepare her for what will happen next.  As she flees north using multiple disguises, Bird has to work out who exactly is on her trail, and who – if anyone – she can trust.  Like many people, she has fantasised about escape for a long time.  But now it is actually happening.  Is her greatest fear that she will be hunted down, or that she will never be found?

In the words of best-selling author Paula Hawkins, ‘At the heart of this nail-bitingly tense and compelling spy novel is a lonely and haunted protagonist who stays in the mind long after the final page has turned.

Praise for Louise Doughty

Doughty is a brilliant storyteller who knows how to build suspense to breaking point. The Times

The Leftover Woman
Jean Kwok

The Author

Jean Kwok is the New York Times and internationally best-selling author of Girl in Translation, Mambo in Chinatown and Searching for Sylvie Lee, which was a Read with Jenna Today Show Pick. Her work has been published in twenty countries and is taught in universities, colleges and high schools across the world. She has been selected for numerous honours, including the American Library Association Alex Award, the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award and the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award international shortlist. She is fluent in Chinese, Dutch, and English, and currently lives in the Netherlands.

 The Book

Jasmine Yang thought her daughter was dead at birth. But five years after she was taken from her arms, she learns that her controlling husband sent the baby to America to be adopted, a casualty of China’s One Child Policy. Fleeing her rural Chinese village, Jasmine arrives in New York City with nothing except a desperate need to find her daughter. But with her husband on her trail, the clock is ticking, and she’s forced to make increasingly risky decisions if she ever hopes to be reunited with her child.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Whitney seems to have it all: a high-powered career, a beautiful home, a handsome husband, and an adopted Chinese daughter she adores. But when an industry scandal threatens to jeopardize not only Rebecca’s job but her marriage, this perfect world begins to crumble.  Two women in a divided city, separated by wealth and culture, yet bound together by their love for the same child. And when they finally meet, their lives will never be the same again…

Praise for Jean Kwok

A hugely atmospheric and suspenseful mystery. Lucy Foley, author