Edinburgh Gliterary Lunch, December 2025

Havoc
Rebecca Wait

The Author

Rebecca is the author of five novels, most recently Havoc. Her previous novel, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, was a Times, Guardian, Express, Good Housekeeping, and BBC Culture Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Nota Bene Prize. Her third novel, Our Fathers received widespread acclaim and was a Guardian book of the year and a thriller of the month for Waterstones.

The Book

Fleeing Scotland in the wake of family disgrace, 16-year-old Ida Campbell secures a scholarship at a crumbling girls’ boarding school on the south English coast. Despite the eccentricities of her new Headmistress, who likes to drill her girls on the ever-present threat of nuclear war, St Anne’s seems like a refuge.

But all this is about to change. For a start, her new room-mate is the infamous Louise Adler, potential arsonist and total outcast.  Meanwhile, the geography teacher Eleanor Alston, in her forties, a disastrous love affair in her wake, faces the new term with weary resignation. But the fragile ecosystem of the school is disrupted by the arrival of a new teacher, Matthew Langfield. The girls – and teachers – find themselves pleasantly ruffled, but Eleanor has an uneasy feeling he is not who he says he is and things only get worse when a mysterious sickness starts to spread throughout the school. Is it a case of mass hysteria – or could there be a poisoner among them?

Praise for Rebecca Wait

“Tragedy and comedy fuse together perfectly in a labyrinthine mystery of emotional and psychological complexity.”  Jo Brand, comedian

Ordinary Saints
Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin

The Author

Irish writer, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin was the winner of the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize and was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize Trust Discoveries Prize in 2022.  Her début literary novel, Ordinary Saints is A Radio 2 Book Club pick and has been shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.  Niamh lives and works in Edinburgh.

The Book

Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay lives in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself . . .

Inspired by the author’s own devout upbringing, Ordinary Saints is a brilliant debut novel from a fresh, exciting new voice which asks – who gets to decide how we are remembered – and who we will become?

An exploration of family, grief, queer identity, and the legacy of the Catholic Church in Ireland, inspired by the author’s own devout upbringing and Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint.   Ordinary Saints is a brilliant debut novel from a fresh, exciting new voice which asks – who gets to decide how we are remembered – and who we will become?

Praise for Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin

“Stunning. A beautiful story about the awkward, often painful silences around dinner tables. A fresh funny, honest portrayal of familial love. I adored it.”  Louise Nealon