On 17 April 1984, as demonstrators gathered outside the Libyan embassy in London, two gunmen lay in wait inside. At 10.18 a.m. automatic gunfire rained down and WPC Yvonne Fletcher fell, mortally wounded. As his friend lay dying, PC John Murray made her a promise that he would seek justice. 37 years would pass before he was able to fulfil that undertaking.

While researching this moving account of one man’s dogged pursuit of justice for a murdered colleague, Matt Johnson uncovered secret-service deals and government duplicity, all part of a plan to force an end to the National Union of Mineworker strike. He discovered the real reason Yvonne’s killers were allowed to go free and how events led to 30 years of growing political control of policing, resulting in the disarray increasingly evident today.

This compelling account pulls seemingly unconnected threads into a coherent and shocking whole. It provides startling insights into how decisions taken by our politicians and the actions of our intelligence agencies, may be anything but.

Full details and tickets from redlionbooks.co.uk

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Holly Pester is a poet and writer. She has worked in sound art and performance, with BBC Radio, Women’s Art Library and Wellcome Collection. Keiran Goddard grew up in Shard End, Birmingham. He is the author of two poetry collections, and two novels: Hourglass, which was widely acclaimed and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott prize, and I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, which will be published in February 2024.

The Lodgers by Holly Pester

A stunning first novel from Holly Pester – a writer already hailed as one of the best poets of her generation.

“What it said to me was that I was here again, I was back, back from the great nowhere of somewhere else, returned, all too officially, to the whereabouts of Moffa.”

After a year away, a woman arrives back in her hometown to keep an eye on her wayward mother, Moffa. Living in a precarious sub-let, she is always on edge, anticipating a visit from the landlord or the arrival of the other resident. But her thoughts also drift back to the rented room she has just left, now occupied by a new lodger she has never met, but whose imagined navigations within the house and home become her fascination.

The minor dramas of temporary living are prised open and ransacked in Holly Pester’s irreverent reckoning with those who house us. This is a story about what it means to live and love within and outside of family structures. It is also a stunning first novel from a writer already hailed as one of the best poets of her generation.

I See Building Fall Like Lightning

Five friends. Five lives. Countless hopes.

Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli and Conor grew up together. They played together, skipped school together, and dreamt of everything they’d do with their lives.

Now they are thirty, and only Rian has made it out of the estate and moved away to another city, but his money doesn’t stop him clinging to a vision of the past that is quickly slipping away. Oli is fading by the day, drinking and snorting his way through the endless boredom, while Conor has a baby on the way and a business plan he hopes will change everything. Patrick and Shiv are as in love as ever, but even they are rocked when an old secret opens up new wounds.

Bold, ambitious and stylistically striking, I See Buildings Fall like Lightning asks what happens when all the things we expect from our lives end up not happening. It lays bare the ways that place and circumstance shape us, explores the redeeming and transforming beauty of friendship and examines the true limits of hope and forgiveness

Wednesday 7th February at 6pm
Venue: Red Lion Books, Colchester
£5 ticket price is redeemable against Holly’s book, on the evening.

Book tickets: redlionbooks.co.uk

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The Manningtree Witches is published on 4th March in hardback.

A.K. Blakemore to discuss the book further on 24th March, 8pm.

For more information about this event please email [email protected]

The Manningtree Witches

England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages.

Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers – the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued.

The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust and betrayal ran amok as the power of men went unchecked and the integrity of women went undefended. It is a visceral, thrilling book that announces a bold new talent

About the author

A.K.Blakemore is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Humbert Summer (Eyewear, 2015) and Fondue (Offord Road Books, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection. She has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo (My Tenantless Body, Poetry Translation Centre, 2019). Her poetry and prose writing has been widely published and anthologised, appearing in the London Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Review and the White Review, among others.

Follow A.K. Blakemore on twitter: @akblakemore

#TheManningtreeWitches

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