The following writers appeared at the last Bookstock on 26 Jan 2013.
Compère: Dave Chawner
Dave is no stranger to fiction as a panelist on Loaded TV's Lad's Lit ("The UK's only TV show for blokes that love books.") He is a regular on TV and radio, and has appeared on Food Inspectors, Universally Challenged and Zone One Radio. He will tour later this year and has appeared at The Brighton Festival, The Edinburgh Fringe and pubs, clubs and theatres up and down the UK.
**** Three Weeks, "Brilliant" Metro, "Great", BBC
Keith Kahn-Harris
Keith is a writer tracking down those who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of excellence while almost no one else is looking. He is writing a book about unsung heroes, in unsung communities, doing incredible things, including the best waterskiier in Luxembourg and the most popular heavy metal band in Botswana. Watch Keith introduce his book
Get Keith's book delivered upon completion for £10.
Ben Crystal
Ben is "the Jamie Oliver of Shakespeare" (ta, BBC Radio 5 Live!) and an actor and writer of Shakespeare on Toast, a book that aims to smash the myth that The Bard is inaccessible and elitist. In a book told in five acts, Ben reveals the man and his plays as modern, thrilling, uplifting drama. Watch Ben introduce his book.
Ben will be signing copies of Shakespeare on Toast for £6.
Ruby Soames
Ruby Soames lives in the South of France. Her novel Seven Days to Tell You won the People's Book Prize and is about a marriage that is seemingly perfect — until one morning the husband goes out, and doesn't return home. Three years later the wife wakes to find her husband lying next to her, asking for seven days to to tell his story. Watch Ruby introduce her novel.
Ruby will be signing copies of Seven Days to Tell You for £8.
T.D. Griggs
We very warmly welcome back ace Aussie author and Bookstock favourite T.D. Griggs. Tim's million-selling mystery thriller Redemption Blues is re-available on Kindle, and his sweeping, epic love story set against the backdrop of the Raj, Distant Thunder, is out now in Paperback.
Tim will be signing Distant Thunder & The Warning Bell for £6.
Andrew Byrne
Muswell Hill-based author who is trying his hand at words rather than numbers having spent over 20 years working in the City. His first novel, Some Place South of Perfect, is set in London in 2010 about a disparate group of people whose lives rub up against each other for reasons right and wrong. Despite the author’s background, it tells us nothing about interest rate swaps or exchange-traded derivatives but a lot about human foibles. Read Andrew's introduction.
Andrew will be signing copies of Some Place South of Perfect for £8.
The following writers appeared at Bookstock on 3 Nov 2012:
Compère: Lewis Harrison-Barker
Compèring and performing is seasoned comedy improviser and actor Lewis Harrison-Barker. He has performed across the country in various shows and formats, including a ‘sell-out’ run of They Came With Outer Script: The Improvised B-Movie at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe and is a regular performer with Glitch: The Improvised Puppet Show.
“Steven Spielberg should take notes” (Three Weeks, 2011)
Christopher Fowler
Christopher Fowler is a writer of “urban unease, mystery and horror”, master storyteller and one of the contemporary London authors. He has been nominated for eight national book awards, penned over 30 novels including the Bryant & May detective series and acclaimed autobiography Paperboy and written comedy and drama for BBC radio. He also writes a column for the Independent on Sunday and a wickedly entertaining blog.
Visit Christopher Fowler's Amazon page
Hayley Webster
Major new debut author of the original and darkly atmospheric Jar Baby, which has strong parallels with Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. A woman digs beneath the surface of her seemingly idlyllic seaside childhood and discovers a web of secrets that hide a family shame.
Buy a copy of Jar Baby on Amazon
Bobby Nayyar
Writer of West of No East, a story that follows a married man who contacts a former university friend turned protester after his wife suffers a miscarriage. The novel is set against a backdrop of austerity and protest, including London youth riots and revolution in Egypt, as well as the fractured relationships between Sikhs and Muslims.
Buy a copy of West of No East on Amazon
The following writers appeared at Bookstock on 24 March 2012:
Nick Dixon
Our compère is an award-winning new comedian and writer whose work has been broadcast on Radio 4. Nick reached the Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year final after performing stand up for just six months, and won the Comedy Cafe New Act Night on his 20th gig.
Sophia Blackwell
Newcastle-born Sophia Blackwell is a spoken word artist who has performed her poetry at some of the UK’s biggest festivals. Her writing and poetry have been collected in the anthologies Into Temptation, Boys & Girls and Men & Women and her first novel After My Own Heart is out now.
Order a copy of After My Own Heart online
Michael Nath
 
After Michael Nath read his debut novel La Rochelle at a previous Bookstock, the book went on to be nominated for the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. We are thrilled to have him back to exclusively share his follow up, British Story.
Buy a copy of La Rochelle online
The following writers appeared at Bookstock on 3 September 2011:
Lewis Rae
The very versatile actor Lewis Rae was our compère for the night. He has appeared in lead roles in the West End musical Someone Like You (alongside Petula Clark), Channel 4 TV series Captain Butler, feature film Chasing The Deer and Alan Bennet's adaptation of Wind in The Willows at Bristol Old Vic.
Ross Raisin (Finsbury Park)
Ross is behind God's Own Country, the tale of an unlikely friendship that turns into something more unnerving on a Yorkshire Moors sheep farm, and which is currently #10 in our top 100 reads. His follow up, Waterline has been acclaimed by The Guardian as a "masterly portrayal of a former shipbuilder's tragic fall."
Buy a copy of Waterline online
Trilby Kent
Trilby's first children's novel, Medina Hill , was published by Tundra Books (McClelland & Stewart/Random House) in October 2009. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. She lives in London.
Buy a copy of Smoke Portrait online
Graham Pears (Stocksfield)
Graham is a retired Northumbrian Chief Superintendent, who took an arts degree in the middle of his career as a diversion from day-to-day policing. He has now dedicated himself to writing page-turning crime fiction. It has been said his creation 'Jet' is to Newcastle what Morse is to Oxford and Rebus to Edinburgh.
Buy a copy of The Myth of Justice online
Anna Stothard
Anna lived in LA for two years, studying at the American Film Institute, before returning to London. She has written weekly columns in The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph, and articles in other newspapers. Her first novel, Isabel and Rocco, was published in 2004, and she is now working on her third book.
Buy a copy of The Pink Hotel online
Patrick Gooch (East Sussex)
Prior to the success of his first thriller The Dark Side of the Balcony in 2007, Patrick has worked as a marketing professional for international companies, chief executive of a British government-inspired trade council, and lectured at the Central School of Art and Design. He was made a Commander of Civil Merit by King Juan Carlos of Spain for his work promoting Spanish food and wine.
Buy a copy of Mosaic Deceptions online
Little Machine (South London)
Little Machine are a band that make songs that draw on a thousand years of poetry from the Medieval to the Metaphysicals to the modern. William Carlos Williams, Blake, Shakespeare, Carol Ann Duffy, Carew, Keats, Eliot, Larkin and more all get the treatment.
Download free Little Machine MP3s
Tony Dunn
Comedian and broadcaster Tony Dunn returns as MC for a third time to satisfy his Bookstock following. Tony has been performing stand up across the UK for the last three years, becoming a Laughing Horse New Act of the Year finalist, a Comedy Cafe New Act Winner, and Comedy Store and Black Cat Comedy gong winner.
Stuart Evers (Walthamstow)
A former bookseller and editor, Stuart Evers now writes about books for the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Time Out and many other publications. His fiction has appeared in 3:AM Magazine, Litro, The Book Club Boutique Magazine and on EverydayGenius.com.
Buy a copy of Ten Stories About Smoking online
Katy Evans-Bush (Stoke Newington)
Poet and blogger Katy Evans-Bush "can tell an offbeat story the way you've never heard it before, but wanted to". She published a poetry collection Me and the Dead in 2008 and a pamphlet Oscar & Henry in 2010. She writes the "stylish, vivacious and darkly hilarious" blog Baroque in Hackney, edits online literary magazine Horizon Review, and tutors for the Poetry School. Her new collection, Egg Printing Explained is due in June.
Buy a copy of Me and the Dead online
Trevor Bloom (London)
Trevor Bloom is writer of historical fiction who grew up on army bases in the UK, Germany and the Far East. His first novel The Half Slave is a tale of "love, revenge and betrayal" set in the dying days of the Roman Empire.
Buy a copy of The Half-Slave online
Jan Van Mersbergen (Netherlands via Archway)
Jan van Mersbergen "stands at the forefront of new Dutch writing" and has completed five novels. His concise and tense style has earned him critical acclaim and a wide readership. Morgen zijn we in Pamplona was first published in Dutch in 2007 and has already been translated into German and French.
Buy a copy of Tomorrow Pamplona online
Lyndsay Russell (Kingston)
Lyndsay Russell is a writer, illustrator and photographer. Her first novel Fat Chance - recently republished as Making it Big - satirises weight obsessed celebrity magazines and "hits back at the 'skinny insanity' currently gripping the western world".
Buy a copy of Making it Big online
Howard Linskey (Welwyn Garden City)
Howard Linskey grew up in County Durham. His first novel, The Drop is published by No Exit Press and has been described as "a Get Carter for the 21st century' and is set in the Newcastle underworld.
Buy a copy of The Drop online
Tony Dunn
Comedian, broadcaster and self-confessed book nut Tony Dunn returned as our compère for the night. Tony has been performing stand up across the UK for the last three years, becoming a Laughing Horse New Act of the Year finalist, a Comedy Cafe New Act Winner, and Comedy Store and Black Cat Comedy gong winner.
Lane Ashfeldt (Islington)
Lane Ashfeldt's short fiction has appeared in various anthologies, including A Lime Jewel (in aid of Haiti), the rough and raucous Punk Fiction, and the rather more genteel Dancing With Mr Darcy. She has won a Short Histories Award, Fish Prize, Hawthornden Fellowship, and a Jane Austen Short Story Award.
Buy a copy of A Lime Jewel (in aid of Haiti) or visit Lane's Amazon page
Bobby Smith & Margaret Oshindele-Smith (Waltham Cross)
Hardcore punk rocker Bobby and his God fearing, methodist Nigerian wife Margaret tell their story in One Love Two Colours: The unlikely marriage of a Punk Rocker & his African Queen. They went down a storm at the first Bookstock, so we allowed them back for an encore!
Buy a copy of One Love Two Colours online
Tom Macaulay
Tom Macaulay has been a full-time novelist for ten years, but was 50 before he became an overnight success. His current book The Warning Bell is a gripping psychological drama set in the present day but with links back to World War 2.
Buy a copy of The Warning Bell online
Michael Nath (Earl's Court)
Michael Nath read from his darkly comic debut, La Rochelle. Published earlier this year, it was labelled "Original, funny and absolutely spot-on" by the Independent and selected for the latest round of the Exclusively Independent promotion run by the Arts Council and Legend Press.
Buy a copy of La Rochelle online
Richard Asplin (South London)
Bookish, bespectacled Richard Asplin is "the first blue chip young novelist of the 21st Century" according to Tony Parsons. His third novel, Conman is a heisty, capery comic thriller that was shortisted for the 2010 Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award. Richard is currently recording with his one-man-band Clarksville.
Buy a copy of Conman online
Tony Dunn
Comedian, broadcaster and self-confessed book nut Tony Dunn will be our compère for the night. Tony has been performing stand up across the UK for the last three years, becoming a Laughing Horse New Act of the Year finalist, a Comedy Cafe New Act Winner, and Comedy Store and Black Cat Comedy gong winner.
Nikki Dudley (West Hampstead)
Nikki is author of recently published Ellipsis. She has also written a 'chapbook' called exits/origins, had her poetry published widely, and co-founded online magazine streetcake. She was shortlisted twice in London Writers' Competition and won the Promise Prize in 2005. Nikki is currently working on her second novel, Semblance.
Buy a copy of Ellipsis online
The Punk and the Princess (Waltham Cross)
Hardcore punk rocker Bobby Smith will be appearing with his God fearing, methodist Nigerian wife to tell their story One Love Two Colours: The unlikely marriage of a Punk Rocker & his African Queen. Bobby has contributed to football and punk fanzines including A Load of Bull and Kick in the Balls.
Buy a copy of One Love Two Colours online
Leigh Russell (NW London)
Leigh is the author of crime thrillers featuring DI Geraldine Steel. Last year's debut Cut Short was a runaway success with three reprints in under a year and gained many plaudits in the crime writing world, including from Jeffery Deaver who called it "a stylish, top-of-the-line crime tale". Recent follow up Road Closed looks set to follow suit.
Buy a copy of Cut Short online
Rick Senley
Rick is a journalist, photographer and author of ironic Victorian murder mystery Moustache Man - the Deadly Whiskers. He writes about prostitutes, cooking beef and the underworld for FHM and Loaded as well as less classy publications such as the Observer. Last year he was shortlisted for Travel Photographer of the Year.
Buy a copy of Moustache Man online
Christopher Fowler
Christopher Fowler is an "author of urban unease, dark comedy, mystery and horror" who has been nominated for eight national book awards. He is the author of the Bryant & May detective series, an acclaimed autobiography Paperboy and has a column in the Independent on Sunday. He rustled up a brilliant short story for our Winter's Tale evening.
Visit Christopher Fowler's Amazon page
Brian Docherty
Glaswegian poet Brian is widely published in magazines and anthologies. His second collection, A Desk with a View, was published by Hearing Eye in 2008 and his third, The 'If' in California, is forthcoming from Smokestack Books.
Buy a copy of Desk With a View
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