East Riding Libraries
download East Riding Libraries Leaflet (PDF format)

Readers Day 2008 Authors download Readers' Day Leaflet (PDF format) AM: Morning Sessions. You will be sent this book three weeks before the event. PM: Afternoon Sessions. These sessions are likely to begin with a discussion of the respective author’s new book, and then broaden to a general discussion of their writing. A complete timetable of panel and small group discussions will be sent on booking.

Karen Maitland Karen began her working life teaching English to adults in a College of Agriculture in Nigeria and has worked in many tricky situations since then – including libraries! She now teaches creative writing and remains an active member of her readers’ group.

AM 1: Company of Liars (Penguin)
Midsummer’s Day, 1348: within weeks, swathes of England will be hit by plague. While panic and suspicion seethes through the land, a small band of travellers comes together to outrun the breakdown of order. When one of their number is found hanging from a tree, the chilling discovery confirms that something more sinister than plague is in their midst.

PM 1: Company of Liars (Penguin)
As Karen’s first book The White Room is now out of print, the afternoon session will look again at Company of Liars.
 

Gregory Norminton Gregory studied English at Oxford and trained as an actor. His novels include, The Ship Of Fools, Arts And Wonders, Ghost Portrait and now Serious Things. He is also an environmental activist and has appeared in the television series Planet Action.

AM 2: Ghost Portrait (Sceptre)
This novel explores the conflict between public duty and private desire, idealism and ambition through the life of the17th-century British painter Nathaniel Deller.

PM 2: Serious Things (Sceptre)
In the early 1990s, at an old-fashioned boarding school, two boys form an intense friendship that will shape the course of their lives. Taken under the wing of an idealistic English teacher, they are encouraged to explore ‘more serious things’ outside college life. But in the hothouse of the school, a slight from their mentor seems of earth shattering-importance, with fateful consequences.
 

Clare Morrall Clare Morrall`s first novel, Astonishing Splashes Of Colour, was published by Tindal Street Press in 2003 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

AM 3: Natural Flights Of The Human Mind (Sceptre)
In a disused lighthouse on the Devon coast lives Peter Straker, a recluse who, in his dreams, is visited by an oddly disparate group of people. But they have all been dead for 24 years – and Straker thinks he’s killed them. Guilt, emotional bruising and a Tiger Moth plane lie at the heart of this warm story of misfits.

PM 3: The Language of Others (Sceptre)
As a child, Jessica Fontaine only fi nds contentment playing the piano and wandering alone in the empty spaces of Audlands Hall, the dilapidated country house where she grows up. Twenty-five years later, divorced, with her son still living at home, Jessica remains preoccupied by the desire to create space around her. Then her volatile ex-husband reappears, the first of several surprises that both transform Jessica’s present and give her a startling new perpective on the past.
 

Andrew Martin Andrew grew up in Yorkshire. After qualifying as a barrister he became a freelance journalist, writing about The North, class, trains, seaside towns and eccentric individuals. He is perhaps best known for his ‘Jim Stringer, Steam Detective’ series.

AM 4: Murder at Deviation Junction (Faber)
December, 1909. A train hits a snow drift in the frozen Cleveland Hills. In the process of clearing the line a body is discovered, and so begins a dangerous case for Jim Stringer. Jim’s faltering career in the railway police hangs on whether he can solve the murder - but before long the pursuer becomes the pursued.

PM 4: Death on a Branch Line (Faber)
One sweltering Friday evening in 1911 a special train rolls into York station carrying a young aristocrat recently found guilty of murdering his father in the sleepy village of Adenwold. He is briefly entrusted into the custody of railway detective Jim Stringer, whom he warns, as they rattle along the branch line to Adenwold, of another murder about to take place in the village.

Welcome to Readers’ Day 2008. If you love reading, talking and listening to other people discuss books then you’ll find our Readers’ Day a tonic for your imagination.

With its mix of small group discussions, focusing on books that we’ll send to you to read in advance, and large scale panel debates, you’ll leave the day with your head buzzing with ideas and lists of new books and authors that could change your reading life for good.

When you sign up for Readers’ Day, we’ll send you more information plus a book by the author you select. Deadline for applications is Saturday 12th April. If you book after this date you may experience a delay in receiving your book. As Readers’ Days tend to sell out, we recommend early booking.

Readers Day 2008 forms part of the East Riding Library Service’s celebration of the National Year of Reading, which will also include a vote on the East Riding’s favourite ‘classic’ books, debates about what makes a great library, poetry performances, workshops and many other events, all focusing on reading and libraries.

John Clarke
Wordquake, East Riding Libraries
01482 392745
email: john.clarke@eastriding.gov.uk