Big names booked for library

ELGIN Library has booked a trio of big-name writers for its autumn chapter of events.

Prestigious authors Alexander McCall Smith, Mary Paulson-Ellis and Harriet Evans are all lined up to tell people about their award-winning stories.

Times bestseller and Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2017 winner Mary Poulson-Evans will talk about her latest novel, The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing, on Wednesday, October 16, at 7pm.

Her latest novel opens with an old soldier dying alone in his Edinburgh nursing home with no known relatives and no will. A pawn ticket is found among his belongings and £50,000 in used notes sewn into the lining of his burial suit. Heir hunter Solomon Farthing is tipped off on this unexplained fortune. And so Solomon uncovers a mystery that goes back to 1918 and a group of 11 soldiers abandoned in a farmhouse billet in France in the weeks leading up to the armistice.

Evans, an acclaimed author who has sold more than one million books worldwide, will deliver a talk on Monday, November 4, at 7pm.

Her previous titles include The Wildflowers and The Butterfly Summer and A Place for Us. Her latest novel, The Garden of Lost and Found, is about painters, lost paintings, families and magic. The book opens in 1919 and is a heart-breaking tale of a family ripped apart and the extraordinary house they called home.

McCall Smith will speak at the library on December 4, at 6.30pm. He has sold more than 20 million books in his No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, and is also well known for his 44 Scotland Street novels, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the von Igelfeld series, the Corduroy Mansions books as well as various standalone novels and a re-working of Jane Austen’s Emma.

He has written and contributed to more than 100 books including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of very popular children’s books.

Tickets for all events are available online at https://secure.moray.gov.uk/eshop/home.php or by calling 01343 562602.

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