This event will be BSL interpreted.

Join best-selling author Ann Cleeves in conversation with Fiona Erskine as she introduces her latest novel ‘The Raging Storm’. Ann is the creator of popular detectives Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn and has written more than thirty-five critically acclaimed novels. Fiona Erskine is the author of ‘The Chemical Detective’ thriller series.

Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. Ann also spends her time advocating for reading to improve health and wellbeing and supporting access to books. In 2021 her Reading for Wellbeing project launched with local authorities across the North East, and in 2022 she was awarded an OBE for her services to reading and libraries. She lives in Northumberland where the Vera books are set.

Fiona Erskine is a professional engineer and writer based in the North-East of England. She grew up in Edinburgh, studied Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University before travelling the world, working in fertiliser factories, oil terminals, international construction projects and power plants. Her first thriller, The Chemical Detective was published in 2019 by the Point Blank imprint of OneWorld , the second in the series The Chemical Reaction was published in 2020, with The Chemical Cocktail in 2022. A stand alone novel Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects was published by Sandstone Press in 2021. The Chemical Code was released in June 2023.