Kate Sawyer & Laura Kay

Join us for an evening with acclaimed novelists Kate Sawyer & Laura Kay as they discuss their second novels ‘This Family’ and ‘Wild Things’.

‘This Family’ by Kate Sawyer –

It is my dearest wish, that after so long apart, I am able to bring this family together for my wedding day.

This house. This family.

Mary has raised a family in this house. Watched her children play and laugh and bicker in this house. Today she is getting married in this house, with all her family in attendance.

The wedding celebrations have brought fractured family together for the first time in years: there’s Phoebe and her husband Michael, children in tow. The young and sensitive Rosie, with her new partner. Irene, Mary’s ex-mother-in-law. Even Emma, Mary’s eldest, is back for the wedding – despite being at odds with everyone else.

Set over the course of an English summer’s day but punctuated with memories from the past forty years of love and loss, hope and joy, heartbreak and grief, this is the story of a family. Told by a chorus of characters, it is an exploration of the small moments that bring us to where we are, the changes that are brought about by time, and what, despite everything, stays the same.

‘Wild Things’ by Laura Kay

El Evans is stuck in a dead-end job, hopelessly in unrequited love with her best friend, Ray, and in need of a major life change.

After a New Year’s resolution to ‘Be More Wild’, El is soon in possession of one (small) tattoo, one (bad) hangover and memories of one (very disappointing) threesome. . . but she’s trying and surely it can only get better?

So when a plan is hatched for El, Ray and their two closest friends – newly heartbroken Will and Instagram darling Jamie – to ditch the big city and move out to a ramshackle house in the middle of the English countryside, El can hardly say no. This is her big chance for a fresh start, the perfect wild thing.

But living in close proximity to the love of your life without letting on isn’t as easy as El might think. . .