All the Hidden Truths by Claire Askew

The Author

Claire Askew is a poet, novelist and community educator based in Edinburgh.  Her debut novel was winner of the 2016 Lucy Cavendish prize for fiction and long-listed for the 2014 Peggy Chapman-Andrews (Bridport) novel Award.  Claire holds a PHD in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh and has won a variety of accolades for her work, including  the Jessie Kesson Fellowship and a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.  Her debut poetry award This Changes Things, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016 and shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and a Satire First Book Award.

Praise for Claire Askew

‘Raw, powerful, compassionate and deeply moving, with page-turning tension to the end. A stunning debut.’ Karen Robinson, Sunday Times Crime Club

The Book

On the 14th May at 8.20am Ryan Summer walked into 3 Rivers College in Edinburgh and started shooting.  The day before DI Helen Birch started a new job.  The day before Ishbel Hodgekiss argued with her daughter.  The day before Moira Summers tried to talk to her son.

Ryan killed multiple women before shooting himself.  No one can say why, yet the question cries out to be answered – by Ryan’s mother, Moira; by Ishbel, the mother of Abigail, the first victim; and by DI Helen Birch, put in charge of the case on the first day in her new job.  But as the tabloids and the media swarm, as the families’ secrets come out, and as the world searches for someone to blame, the truth seems to vanish.  The impact of the shooting ripples out across the lives of these three women, all of whom are searching for answers to the unanswerable.

All the Hidden Truths is a stunningly moving novel from an exciting new voice. It will cause you to question your assumptions about the people you love, and reconsider how the world reacts to tragedy.

Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott

The Author

Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott was born and raised in Houston, Texas, before coming to call Los Angeles and London her adopted homes. She is a graduate of UEA’s Creative Writing MA course and was the winner of the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award.

Swan Song is her first novel.

Praise for Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott

Swan Song, a dazzlingly assured first novel from Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott…This clever book, with the moreish astringency of a negroni, is a perfect summer cocktail.  Sunday Times

The Book

Based on ten years of research comes a dazzling literary debut about the rise and self-destructive fall of Truman Capote and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his swans.  Compulsively readable, Swansong is a tale of society, romance and betrayal that moves between the cocktail-soaked Manhattan parties and Capote’s childhood in Depression-era Alabama, capturing a great writer’s meteoric rise and self-destructive fall.

Having reached the pinnacle of literary success after In Cold Blood’s wild acclaim, Truman Capote is society’s darling. But in 1975 he drops a literary grenade which, overnight, will make him persona non grata.  Suffering from writer’s block, and with a crisis in confidence mounting, he decides to publish excerpts from his savage Answered Prayers, inexplicably betraying the confidences of his inner circle of the wealthy and powerful elite of mid-twentieth century society women. Told from the collective and divergent perspectives the book spans three decades of friendships, and the gossip-riven world its characters inhabit.

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