Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers – 30th April, 7PM, The Neston Club

The Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers are back again for a chat and a sing song!

All tickets are £16 and include the book of your choice (see options below)

Val McDermid's Past Lying

Edinburgh, haunted by the ghosts of its many writers, is also the cold case beat of DCI Karen Pirie. So she shouldn’t be surprised when an author’s manuscript appears to be a blueprint for an actual crime.

Karen can’t ignore the plot’s chilling similarities to the unsolved case of an Edinburgh University student who vanished from her own doorstep. The manuscript seems to be the key to unlocking what happened to Lara Hardie, but there’s a problem: the author died before he finished it. As Karen digs deeper, she uncovers a spiralling game of betrayal and revenge, where lies are indistinguishable from the truth and with more than one unexpected twist .

Chris Brookmyre's The Cliff House

One hen weekend, seven secrets… but only one worth killing forJen’s hen party is going to be out of control… She’s rented a luxury getaway on its own private island.

The helicopter won’t be back for seventy-two hours. They are alone. They think.

As well as Jen, there’s the pop diva and the estranged ex-bandmate, the tennis pro and the fashion guru, the embittered ex-sister-in-law and the mouthy future sister-in-law. It’s a combustible cocktail, one that takes little time to ignite, and in the midst of the drunken chaos, one of them disappears. Then a message tells them that unless someone confesses her terrible secret to the others, their missing friend will be killed.

Problem is, everybody has a secret. And nobody wants to tell.

Doug Johnstone’s The Opposite of Lonely

The Skelf women are recovering from the cataclysmic events that nearly claimed their lives. Their funeral-director and private-investigation businesses are back on track, and their cases are as perplexing as ever.

Matriarch Dorothy looks into a suspicious fire at an illegal campsite and takes a grieving, homeless man under her wing. Daughter Jenny is searching for her missing sister-in-law, who disappeared in tragic circumstances, while grand-daughter Hannah is asked to investigate increasingly dangerous conspiracy theorists, who are targeting a retired female astronaut … putting her own life at risk.   With a body lost at sea, funerals for those with no one to mourn them, reports of strange happenings in outer space, a funeral crasher with a painful secret, and a violent attack on one of the family, The Skelfs face their most personal – and perilous – cases yet.

Mark Billingham’s The Last Dance

Meet Detective Declan Miller. A double murder in a seaside hotel sees a grieving Miller return to work to solve what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. Just why were two completely unconnected men taken out?Despite a somewhat dubious relationship with both reality and his new partner, can the eccentric, offbeat Miller find answers where his colleagues have found only an impossible puzzle?’Funny, moving, and full of surprises .

Stuart Neville’s House of Ashes

For Sara Keane, it was supposed to be a second chance. A new country. A new house.

A new beginning with her husband Damien. Then came the knock on the door. Elderly Mary Jackson can’t understand why Sara and her husband are living in her home.

She remembers the fire, and the house burning down. But she also remembers the children. The children who need her, whom she must protect.

‘The children will find you,’ she tells Sara, because Mary knows she needs help too. Sara soon becomes obsessed with what happened in that house nearly sixty years ago – the tragic, bloody night her husband never intended for her to discover. And Mary – silent for six decades – is finally ready to tell her story .

Luca Veste’s You Never Said Goodbye

The day she left was only the beginning . . .

Sam was eleven when his mother went out and never came back. He waited for her and then he grieved for her, as his family fell apart around him. Sam tried to get on with his life in the intervening years.

But it’s only as his father lies dying that Sam begins to realise the cracks and inconsistencies in their family history. Who was his mother and why did she need to disappear? Why cover it up? As Sam searches for answers, and the trial leads him from the UK to the US, danger builds around him . .

The latest hardback from Luca Veste (Trust in me)  will be available to purchase on the night.