Meet the Bestsellers – 2020
Every one of the authors in our line up is a Sunday Times Bestseller!
Full details , venue , ticket prices to follow soon. Please email BroadstairsLit@gmail.com or call us 07397 337847 to register interest as tickets sell out quickly
March 12th 6.30pm for 7pm Hallie Rubenhold —Ripper n Chips
The award winning historical author talks about her book -The Five, the untold story of Jack the Rippers victims. Includes fish n chip supper
April 5th 5.30pm for 6pm Lara Maiklem —Mudlarking
The acclaimed Broadstairs author shares her amazing historical finds from the mud of the River Thames and the stories behind them
Exclusive event -limited tickets , Includes fizz, canapés, signed book & Thames keepsake
May 15th 7pm for 7.30pm Murder at The Pavilion!
Specially written for BroadstairsLit this intriguing Murder Mystery includes a 3 course meal
June 25th 6.30pm for 7pm Clare Mackintosh – After the End
Famed for dramatic plot twists The No. 1 best selling ex-DI shares the inspiration behind her work. Includes cheese+wine
October 11th 2.30pm for 3pm Alan Johnson – The Long and Winding Road
Former cabinet minister in Blair and Browns’ governments talks about life in politics and much more. Includes cream tea
December 3rd 6.30pm for 7pm Martina Cole – The Queen of Crime
The record breaking crime writer who has sold over 16 million books, 15 of which have been No.1 bestsellers, shares her remarkable story. Includes wine and nibbles
Hallie Rubenhold
Photo credit Sarah Blackie
Hallie Rubenhold is a bestselling author, social historian, broadcaster and historical consultant for TV and film.
Her most recent book, The Five; The untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the (Doubleday, 2019) is the first full length biography of the Ripper’s victims. Disregarded by society for over 130 years, The Five pieces together their individual stories and overturns much of the mythology surrounding their lives, including the belief that all of the women were involved in ‘prostitution’. The book became a Sunday Times Bestseller, and won the Baillie Gifford prize 2019, it is also short listed for the Crime Writers Association Golden Dagger Award and the Historical Writers Association Sharpe Books Non- Fiction Crown. The Five has been optioned for a drama series by Mainstreet Pictures.
Two of Hallie’s previous books were also turned into TV programmes -Lady Worsley’s Whim became the BBC drama, The Scandalous Lady W, starring Natalie Dormer and Shaun Evans.
The Covent Garden Ladies, the history of the notorious guidebook to Georgian London’s prostitutes –Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies became the ITV encore series Harlots starring Samantha Morton which is now in its third season.
Lara Maiklem
Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life.
Moving from the river’s tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the River Thames, which Lara calls the longest archaeological site in England.
As she has discovered, it is often the tiniest objects that tell the greatest stories.
BIO
Lara Maiklem moved from her family’s farm to London in the 1990s and has been mudlarking along the River Thames for fifteen years. She now lives with her family on the Kent coast in Broadstairs within easy reach of the river, which she visits as regularly as the tides permit. This is her first book.
Twitter: @LondonMudlark / Instagram: @london.mudlark
Clare Mackintosh -After The End
With more than two million copies of her books sold worldwide, number one bestseller Clare Mackintosh is the multi-award-winning author of I Let You Go, which was a Sunday Timesbestseller and the fastest-selling title by a new crime writer in 2015. It also won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2016.
Both Clare’s second and third novels, I See You and Let Me Lie, were number one Sunday Times bestsellers. All three of her books were selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club. Clare’s latest novel, After the End, was published in June 2019 and spent seven weeks in theSunday Times hardback bestseller chart. Together, Clare’s books have been published in more than forty countries. Clare is patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity based at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, which supports parents experiencing high-risk or difficult pregnancies. She lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.
Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson was General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union before entering Parliament as Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle in 1997. He served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that, he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
His childhood memoir ‘This Boy’ was published by Bantam Press on 9th May 2013. It won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and the Orwell Prize, Britain’s top political writing award. His second volume of memoirs.
‘Please Mr Postman’, was published in September 2014 and won the National Book Club award for Best Biography.
The final book in his memoir trilogy, ‘The Long and winding Road’, was published in September 2016 and won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir.
Alan retired as an MP before the 2017 general election after 20 years as an MP.
On 20th September 2018 his latest book, ‘In My Life – A Music Memoir’ was launched at Studio 2, Abbey Road where the Beatles made almost all of their records.
He and his wife Carolyn live in East Yorkshire.
Martina Cole
Photo Credit Bill Waters
The record-breaking facts…
- More No.1 original fiction bestsellers than any other author.
- £63.2 million worth of books sold, making her the bestselling British-born female crime writer since Nielsen records began in 1998.
- Her books have spent a total of 62 weeks atop The Bookseller’s Original Fiction chart in the Nielsen BookScan era – a record.*
Martina Cole’s debut novel Dangerous Lady, caused a sensation when it was published by Headline in 1992, andlaunched one of the bestselling fiction writers of her generation .Twenty-seven years later Martina is the undisputed queen of crime drama with twenty-four novels to her name of which fifteen have been No.1 bestsellers, and total sales stand at over 16 million copies. She won the British Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year with The Take, which then went on to be a hit TV series for Sky 1. Four of her novels have made it to the screen, with more in the pipeline, and three have been adapted as stage plays.
Her unique, powerful storytelling is acclaimed for its hard-hitting, true-to-life style – there is no one else who writes like Martina Cole.
Martina’s personal story and how she became a writer is truly inspirational and we look forward to her sharing it with us.
Reading is a huge part of Martina’s life and she is an ambassador for The Reading Agency’s Reading Ahead programme which works to inspire and encourage less confident readers to develop an enjoyment of reading at the same time as improving their literacy skills. She regularly visits prisons (her books are routinely the most borrowed in prison libraries), work- places and public libraries across the country. She says: ‘It’s shocking how many people across the UK, and in prisons in particular, can’t write their own name. Books, reading, education in prisons can be a way out of that life. They are banged up, but you shouldn’t send a person out of prison worse than the one you sent in.’
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