Calendar: South East

Oxford Literary Festival

The young people's programme at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, 20-28 March 2010, includes the chance to meet Anthony Horowitz, Louise Rennison, Philip Pullman, Malorie Blackman, Geraldine McCaughrean, Philip Reeve, Steve Cole, Zizou Corder, Cressida Cowell, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Meg Rosoff, Mal Peet, William Nicholson, Andrew Lane (the author of a new series about Young Sherlock Holmes), star illustrators including Chris Riddell and Axel Scheffler (of The Gruffalo) as well as teen circumnavigator Mike Perham and the captain of the England women's cricket team, and more. Most events take place in Christ Church or Corpus Christi College, or in the Sheldonian.

Highlights of the 270 events on the adult programme include John le Carre, P D James, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Victoria Hislop, Anthony Beevor and Jung Chang. Events for young people are £5 or £6

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Emily Gravett

Join award winning picture book author and illustrator Emily Gravett on Tuesday 16th February 2010 as she talks about her life and reads some of her fantastic books including Monkey and Me. And then become an author yourself as you help her to make up a brand new story! Emily will be at Ridge Avenue Library, Enfield, London (N21 2RH) from 11am and at Palmers Green Library, Enfield, London (N13 4EY) from 2.30pm. Suitable for children aged 4 to 8 and their families. Tickets are free but please book in advance by calling T: 020 8379 2708

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Author Available: ANDREW KAY: Pretty Boys All In A Row

Summer 1981 and hedonism rules on the sun-baked island of Ibiza. The streets and bars are overflowing and on the beaches there's a seemingly endless parade of beautiful bronzed adonises. Philip, though, is pasty and pale and plain to boot. Why on earth, he wonders, has he come to this gay paradise when he can barely pluck up the courage even to uncover his body?

Then Philip meets Terry and everything changes. Terry is sixty-something, with a shocking predilection for orange shell suits and plastic flip-flops, but also a bottomless purse and a generous heart. Under Terry's tutelage, Philip begins to discover a whole new self and his transformation from ugly duckling to gorgeous butterfly begins. But Terry, too, has his own demons to face...

In this charming, witty and entertaining novel, Andrew Kay evokes a long-gone and surprisingly innocent world of casual encounters and guilt-free sex, but in the background is a darker theme - the difficulties of ageing, especially in a gay culture obsessed with youth and sexual conquest.

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Rosie Alison talks on The Very Thought of You

All year round (2010)

Rosie is available for library events.

A story of love, loss and complicated loyalties, combining a sweeping narrative with subtle psychological observation, The Very Thought of You has been longlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year 2010 and shortlisted for Amazon Rising Star.

For more information, see
http://www.almabooks.co.uk/the-very-thought-of-you-p-320-book.html

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Sadie Jones on Small Wars

Mid April - Mid June 2010

Sadie Jones is available for library events.

The prizewinning and bestselling author of The Outcast returns with an emotionally powerful portrait of a marriage in extremis and a world-view in question. Sadie Jones has produced a passionate, gut-wrenching and brilliantly researched depiction of a 'small war' with devastating consequences; and in doing so, raises important questions that resonate profoundly today.

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0701184558

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Ben Okri on The Famished Road

April - May 2010

Ben Okri is available for library events.

Azaro is a spirit child who is born only to live for a short while before returning to the idyllic world of his spirit companions. Now he has chosen to stay in the world of the living. This is his story. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize and the first book in Okri's acclaimed trilogy.

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099929309

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Marina Hyde on Celebrity

April - May 2010

Marina Hyde is available for library events.

Celebrity is a brilliant, hilarious thinking person's guide to a world obsessed to the point of lunacy by celebrity: a guide to our times and a classic piece of comic writing.

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=1846552591

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Brian Chikwava on Harare North

April - May 2010

Brian Chikwava is available for library events.

Harare North is a shocking, powerful and hugely acclaimed first novel about life as a refugee.

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=1409076458

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Archie Brown on The Rise and Fall of Communism

April - May 2010

Archie Brown is available for library events.

The Rise and Fall of Communism is a definitive and groundbreaking account of the revolutionary ideology that changed the modern world.

For more information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=1845950674

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Mark Griffiths on The Lotus Quest

April to May 2010

Mark is available for library events.

The Lotus Quest is a magical botanical adventure: a writer's journey in search of the mystery of the Lotus, sacred flower of religions from Egypt to Japan.

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=184595100X

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Alison Weir on Traitors of the Tower

March - April 2010

Alison Weir is available for library events.

More than four hundred years ago, seven people - five of them women - were beheaded in the Tower of London. Three had been queens of England. The others were found guilty of treason. Why were such important people put to death? Alison Weir's gripping book tells their stories: from the former friend betrayed by a man set on being king, to the young girl killed after just nine days on the throne. Alison Weir is a wonderful storyteller. Through her vivid writing, history comes alive.

For further information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099542285

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Ruth Dudley Edwards on Aftermath

March - April 2010

Ruth is available for library events.

Aftermath is a remarkable human, political, and legal story: an insider's account of the landmark attempt to bring the Omagh bombers to justice.

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099472171

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Caroline Moorehead on Dancing to the Precipice

March - April 2010

Caroline Moorehead is available for library events.

Lucie de la Tour du Pan was the Pepys of her generation: her diaries provide a vivid picture of Versailles, the French Recolution and Napoleon. This richly textured, highly enjoyable biography shows us an extraodinary woman in the midst of her extraodinary times.

For fuirther information, please seehttp://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099490528

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Jed Mercurio on American Adulterer

March - April 2010

Jed Mercurio is available for library events.

The subject of this novel is a habitual womaniser. He regards his high libido as physiologically normal; if he goes without a woman for three days, he suffers headaches. He embarks on affairs with Hollywood starlets, with mob molls and numerous female employees, despite debilitating ailments and a persistent fear of losing his beloved wife and children. And this particular philanderer must choose his partners with care and employ painstaking calculation in their seduction. He must go to extraordinary lengths to conceal his affairs from his political rivals - and with good reason. He is the 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099515873

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Paul Collier on Wars, Guns and Votes

March - April 2010

Paul Collier is available for library events.

Wars, Guns, and Votes is a timely, powerful and provocative study of the tensions between democracy and violence in the world's poorest countries, by one of the world's leading development economists.

For more information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099523515

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Philip Sington on The Einstein Girl

March - April 2010

Philip Sington is available for library events.

The Einstein Girl is a gripping and atmospheric historical thriller set in Berlin in 1932, inspired by documents recently discovered concerning Einstein's family.

For more information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099535793

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Tim Thornton on The Alternative Hero

March - April 2010

Tim Thornton is available for library events.

One unremarkable Saturday morning Clive sees the biggest alternative-pop star of them all walking down the high street with his dry-cleaning: Lance Webster, disgraced ex-singer of Thieving Magpies ('the biggest British band to emerge from the late-eighties indie-boom' Rolling Stone). Clive hatches a ramshackle plan to befriend his idol and grab the scoop of a lifetime - why did Webster burn out?

For more information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=009953178X

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Anthony Quinn on The Rescue Man

February - March 2010

Anthony Quinn is available for library events.

In a Liverpool torn apart by the Second World War, the 'Rescue Man' takes to saving the wounded from bombed buildings. But can he stop his own life from unravelling?

For further information, please see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099531933

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Hephzibah Anderson on Chastened

February - March 2010

Hephzibah Anderson is available for library events.

'I'd had enough sex without love, maybe it was time to look for love without sex?': a witty look at twenty-first-century sex as Hephzibah Anderson seeks to resurrext romance during a year-long adventure in chastity.

For more information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099532158

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James Scudamore on Heliopolis

February - March 2010

James Scudamore is available for library events.

As a child Ludo is plucked out of the shantytown where he was born and transported to a world of languid, cosseted luxury. Now twenty-seven, he works high above the sprawling metropolis of São Paulo for a vacuous 'communications company'. But this is not his world, and this is not a simple rags-to-riches story: Ludo's destiny moves him around like a chess piece, showing him both extremities of opulent excess and abject poverty, taking him to the brink of madness and brutality.

For more information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099523841

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Gabriel Weston on Direct Red

February - March 2010

Gabriel Weston is available for library events.

Gabriel Weston worked in the big-city hospitals of the twenty-first century; a woman in a world dominated by Alpha males. Her world was one of disease, suffering and extraordinary pressure where a certain moral ambiguity and clinical detachment were necessary tools for survival. Startling and honest, her account combines a fierce sense of human dignity with compassion and insight, illuminating scenes of life and death the rest of us rarely glimpse.

For more information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0099520699

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Paul Strathern on The Artist, The Philosopher and the Warrior

February - March 2010

Paul Strathern is available for library events.

In his extraordinary new book acclaimed historian Paul Strathern ingeniously focuses on this improbable collusion of three iconic figures of the Italian Renaissance to unite three mighty strands of the period - war, politics and art. As each man's life unfolds, so does the Italian Renaissance.

For more information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=1845951212

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Justine Kilkerr on Advice for Strays

January - February 2010

Justine Kilkerr is available for library events.

An utterly original and hugely imaginative debut, Advice for Strays is a novel about love, loss, family and a very unusual friendship. It marks the arrival of a stunning new voice in contemporary fiction.

For more information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0224087665

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Matthew Kelly on Finding Poland

Mid February to Mid April 2010

Matthew Kelly is available for library events.

Finding Poland is an expansive, insightful and moving history of the Polish experience during World War Two, and its lasting legacy.

For more information, see http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0224081675

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Wendy Law-Yone on The Road to Wanting

April to May 2010

Wendy Law-Yone is available for library events and to speak to reading groups about her book. For more information, click on continue reading.

In The Road to Wanting, a distinguised Burmese novelist tells the story of a startlingly original homecoming.

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Anna Lawrence Pietroni on Ruby's Spoon

1 - 10 February and June 2010

Anna Lawrence Pietroni is available for library events.

Ruby's Spoon is a bold and bewitching debut set in the industrial Black Country of the 1930s. Anna Lawrence Pietroni's fiercely charismatic heroine blazes the arrival of a mesmerising new literary talent.

For more information, see: http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0701184361

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A reading and talk of 'Call The Hands' by Roger Paine

CALLTHE HANDS
A Collection of My Naval Yarns

Have you ever used ink as colouring when icing a cake? Do you know where the expression 'grog' comes from or what happened when the admiral's parrot was seasick or why a general in the Philippines distributed medals from a Freeman, Hardy and Willis shoebox? Have you tried to take three gerbils and a mouse to Hong Kong as pets for your children? Do you know why a distinguished royal visitor had difficulty in flushing the ship's toilet after the independence ceremonies in Antigua or why Invergordon was referred to as 'dump'? Have you heard the story of a cat called Oscar who was sunk with the Bismarck in World War II but survived to be sunk twice more in the ships which rescued him?

The answers to these questions, and many more true salty stories, some worthy of the 'Navy Lark', are contained in "Call the Hands - A Collection of My Naval Yarns" by Roger Paine.

Continue reading A reading and talk of 'Call The Hands' by Roger Paine

Author Available

December 2009, January and February 2010

Tim Jackson is available for library events and reading groups. His book, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, is published by leading environmental publisher Earthscan. www.earthscan.co.uk/pwg

The book links economic growth to our environmental and economic crises, and argues that the consumerism that drives economic growth has started to undermine wellbeing in the advanced economies. He calls for a new definition of prosperity - based on wellbeing rather than GDP.

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Reading Festival of Crime Writing

17, 18, 19 September 2010 (Deadline for programme 1 February 2010)

Over 2,000 crime fans attended the 2009 festival at Reading's magnificent Grade II listed Town Hall and saw Colin Dexter, Mark Billingham, Mo Hayder, Peter Robinson and many more. Our third year promises to be even bigger. Why not be part of it? We are currently looking for authors with average audiences of 80+.

For more information www.readingfestivalofcrimewriting.org.uk

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Chichester Festivities

25th June - 9th July 2010 (Deadline for programme = end of December 2009)

Chichester Library is looking for enthusiastic authors to take part in the 2010 Chichester Festivities. The Festivities are are a long established and successful annual cultural event. The Library plays host to authors looking for audiences of up to 70 people, although we are also well suited for smaller audiences or literary workshops.

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Hallie Rubenhold on Lady Worsley's Whim

Up to March 2010

Hallie Rubenhold is available for library events.

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Author Wanted

September onwards

We are looking for an author who writes books around the paranormal/psychic theme that will come to Margate Gateway. We have had a successful event with Mia Dolan earlier on in the year and would like to follow that up with another author event.

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Emily Gravett's Rabbits

Join award-winning author and illustrator Emily Gravett as she signs copies of her fantastic new picture book THE RABBIT PROBLEM at Waterstone's Brighton.

Emily is the author and illustrator of nine stunning books for children including MONKEY AND ME, DOGS and LITTLE MOUSE'S BIG BOOK OF FEARS.

For more information on Emily and her books visit www.emilygravett.com

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Russell Miller on The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle

Sept 2009 - March 2010

The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle is the definitive biography of an enduringly fascinating figure, told with panache and full of new material unavailable to any previous biographers.http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=1844139220

Russell is available for library events and talks to reading groups.

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Ian Mortimer on The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

Sept 2009 - Feb 2010

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England is an original, entertaining and illuminating guide to a 'completely different world': England in the Middle Ages.
http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=0224079948

Ian is available for library events and talks to reading groups.

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Yaba Badoe on True Murder

August 2009 - January 2010

Yaba is available for library events. For more information, click on continue reading.

'True Murder' is an entrancing debut by an accomplished film-maker.

For more information, see:
http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=0099523329

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Raphael Honigstein on Englischer Fussball

August 2009 - January 2010

Raphael is available for library events. For more information, click on continue reading.

'Englischer Fussball' is a German's-eye view on our national obsession.

For more information, see:
http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=022408013X

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Thomas Wright on Oscar's Books

Depends on availability

Thomas Wright is available for library events and to speak to reading groups about his book.

http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=Search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0701180617

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