If you are a member of a book club why not choose Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins for your next book club read? You and your friends can then come along to Cedars Hall in Wells, on Sunday 17 October at 2.30pm to hear Lucy speak about her book. She will also take questions about her work. Lucy is a journalist as well as being an author of both fiction and nonfiction works. She is a literary critic for The Sunday Times and served as a judge for the 2017 Costa Book Awards. She teaches creative writing at Oxford University.

Magpie Lane, her spellbinding, page-turning psychological thriller comes with good credentials, having been selected as a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian, The Telegraph, Good Housekeeping and BBC Radio 4's Open Book. It is set in Oxford, Lucy Atkins' home town. The real Magpie Lane is a narrow historic walkway in central Oxford. This chilling novel is a dramatic Gothic mystery which explores the true meaning of family – and what it means to be denied one.

When the eight year old daughter of an Oxford College Master disappears in the middle of the night, the police turn to the Scottish nanny for answers. As this nanny looks back over her time in the Master's eerie and ancient Lodging house, a picture emerges of a high-achieving but dysfunctional family. There is Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; Mariah, his beautiful Danish wife who is pregnant with their child; Felicity, the lost little girl who is almost mute, seeing ghosts and grieving for her dead mother. But is the nanny telling the whole story and should her growing friendship with an eccentric house historian be a cause for concern? And most of all why is Felicity silent?

Tickets for this event can be purchased from the website www.wellsfestivalofliterature.org.uk or by calling the box office at Cedars Hall on 01749 834483 (weekdays from 9.30am to 12.30pm)