Authors you can meet at our Author Fair on 29 November

Book your ticket here or just turn up! 29 Nov 2025, 11:30 – 14:30

The Meeting Point, Nucleus Arts Centre, 272 High St, Chatham ME4 4BP

Whether it’s historical fiction, murder mystery, LGBTQIA+ sci-fi, graphic novels, poetry, or non-fiction about heritage, we’ve got some amazing books to share with you! (Hint, hint, they could make fab stocking fillers for the readers in your life!)

Our festival bookstore, Plunder, will also be in attendance, if you need to pick up any books you didn’t manage to get hold of during the festival. So put the date of our Author Fair in your diaries!

There may also be some last minute additions to the lineup, so bring a bag (though totes may well be available).

• Wordsmithery (Poetry and Graphic novels)

A selection of past and present books will be on sale, including poetry by Barry Fentiman Hall, graphic novels by Sam Hall and recent and back issues of Confluence magazine. Barry Fentiman Hall is a poet who walks, based in the Medway Delta. 

Sam Hall is an author-illustrator who makes graphic novels and comics for adult readers that address the big questions in an accessible way

• Samantha Ward-Smith (Historical fiction)

Samantha is a Historical Fiction writer living in Whitstable.

Tower of Vengeance

Tower of London 1214

Maude de Mandeville is dying, murdered for rejecting King John's advances. 

As she stands before Death, the Devil offers a choice: an eternity in Purgatory or the chance to return as a ghost to avenge her murder and to protect her only son.

Over the course of forty turbulent years within the Tower's mighty walls, Maude realises that the Devil plays a deadly game…

 Will she ever gain vengeance for a death she did not deserve? 

Ravenscourt

He wanted to be gone from the dark enclosing room, with its mocking misery, to be gone from this house of nightmares, of shattered dreams, and discovered secrets which could not be put back in the box.

Venice, 1880. Alexander, Viscount Dundarran, seeks refuge from scandal amidst the fading grandeur of crumbling palazzos during the infamous Carnival in the city. There he encounters the enigmatic Lady Arabella Pembrook—a young, beautiful widow. Both are scarred by their pasts but find solace in each other and a chance at redemption.

But when duty calls Alexander back to England upon his father's death, a darker journey begins. Travelling to Ravenscourt, the decaying estate once belonging to Arabella’s late husband, Alexander must confront the house’s disturbing legacy which has echoed through the generations. Within its walls lie secrets that refuse to stay buried and will threaten everything he thought he knew. But can Alex uncover the truth in time?

• Judith Milton and Chrissie Peters (Non-fiction)

Lead Mining Land The Northern Pennines (Astride Auden’s Watershed) by Judith Milton and Chrissie Peters

The book was a response to something I heard on the radio series ‘In Our Time’. The programme featured the poet W.H. Auden and I was astonished to learn that he shared my love of lead mining and the Northern Pennines. One of the guests read lines from ‘The Watershed’. In the poem, Auden is standing on a Pennine watershed looking at the mining-induced desolation around him and he states that the land refuses to communicate. I was stunned – to me, the landscape speaks volumes, so I put pen to paper to try to explain how it does so. Each chapter is introduced with lines from one of Auden’s ‘Pennine Poems’. ‘The Watershed’ itself is reproduced in full.

The book is written for the general reader. It’s supported by a series of blogs on the publisher’s website, www.stemplesikepress.co.uk. The blogs allow me to update information that’s out of date almost as soon as it’s published, e.g. recent Primary School closures (due to continued depopulation), and to indulge myself in writing little extras, e.g. the history of Swaledale’s Sir Francis Level.

 It was a joy to write the book and share with readers some of my own and Auden’s thoughts about an often-ignored part of the country. (I’ve dared to disagree with Auden in certain ways!) Social and industrial history, geology, environmental and economic issues…they’re all explored. The text is mine, but it’s only right that my daughter Chrissie, who was responsible for the book’s design, is credited as co-author. The layout and formatting make the pages look very clear and attractive. Their variety makes the reader want to turn the page.

• Maria C. McCarthy (memoir)

www.medwaymaria.co.uk

Learning to be Irish showcases the best new and collected writings of a child of Irish migrants. Raised in Surrey in the 1960s and ’70s, ‘the filling in the sandwich’ of a family of five children, Maria C. McCarthy dances to Irish showbands, learns rebel songs at an uncle’s knee, hears home truths, half-truths and white lies from the women that gather in her mother’s kitchen, and learns to be English after the IRA bombs two pubs in Guildford. Learning to be Irish is a search for identity, a chronicle of a lost generation, and a yearning for truths that may never be known.

Learning to be Irish by Maria C. McCarthy is published by Siglum in May 2025.

Subscribe for free to Maria's Substack newsletter, Maria C. McCarthy is in her Writing Shed  

• Justine Gilbert (Historical fiction and murder mystery)

Historical fiction, Daisy Chain, tells the story of the loves and wars amongst the powerful women in the 1930's White House through the perspective of Franklin Roosevelt's unknown mistress. Winner of the Page Turner Awards, and shortlisted for the Society of Author's prestigious debut novel awards.

A Tuscan murder mystery, Montecatini was shortlisted for the Page Turner awards. Set in 2016 when 200,000 immigrants arrived on Italy's shores, it follows the lives of a hillside community after the discovery of a dead migrant child.

• Matt Doyle (Sci-fi, LGBTQIA+)

AILUROS (Experimental / Sci-Fi / Horror / LGBTQIA+)

#Begin <Ailuros>

In the [Present // Future], Alex and Josh must face their [own // a monster] if they are to salvage their [relationship // Aurilos Unit 23];

These are [not] separate stories.

The Beast of Loughby Island (Horror / Werewolf / LGBTQIA+)

No full moon. No silver bullets. No chance.

A young man named Tom Daniels is kidnapped by a local family and is dropped on Loughby Island in an attempt to 'clean up their streets'. When the family that dropped Tom off is slaughtered by a werewolf-like creature, he soon finds himself banding together with a small group of the island's residents in a fight for their lives against an otherworldly monster.

The Cassie Tam Files (Sci-Fi / Crime Noir / LGBTQIA+)

New Hopeland was built to be the centre of the technological age, but like everywhere else, it has its dark side. Assassins, drug dealers and crooked businessmen form a vital part of the city’s make-up, and sometimes, the police are in too deep themselves to be effective. But hey, there are always other options … Follow the snarky PI Cassie Tam and her pet robo-gargoyle, Bert, as they investigate VR addicts, tech-suited would-be vampires, and more in the complete award-winning Cassie Tam Files series. 

• Janys Thornton (Historical women's fiction)

Female Remedies

On the eve of the first World War, Maisie Kendall, a teacher at a girls' school in a dockyard town where she lodges with the prim deputy headmistress, Miss Garrett. Maisie is befriended by Hattie and Rosie, who introduces her to a new and exciting life as an independent woman. She thinks she has found love with the handsome naval officer, Lieutenant Edward Prescott and she hopes he will marry her, but Edward is posted away from the town. Meanwhile his friend, Lieutenant Peter Barnes becomes a bigger part of Maisie's circle of friends, sharing her interests and assisting her with school. When Hattie and Maisie are involved in a suffragette mission, Peter covers for them. Then at a cricket match, Edward returns and sweeps Maisie off her feet, taking her to all the local functions. Maisie spends less time with her friends and soon regrets agreeing to holiday abroad with them in case Edward is posted again whilst she is overseas. When war is declared Maisie is in Switzerland with Hattie and the prim Miss Garrett together with their friend Miss Ena Briggs. Edward ignores Maisie's increasingly more desperate letters as she discovers she may be pregnant. A dramatic journey, outrunning the advancing Germans, makes her think again and consider her future…

Dockyard Widows Dockyard Widows tells the story of the lives of a group of women in a small naval dockyard town during WWI- their loves and loses, their small triumphs and loyal support for each other in times of need. This is a community that pulls together through the historic disaster of the explosion of the HMS Princess Irene that touches the lives of everybody in the small town. At the very heart of it are the teachers from the Broadway Girls School, Hattie, Betty, and Miss Garrett who do their best to help friend and family through adversity.

An Unsustained Charge

During the First World War, Alice McDonald escapes domestic service to work in the dockyard and play football with her friend Tilly in the Dockyard Stores Ladies team. Her former teacher Hattie West agrees to train the girls, and Alice meets the stores’ manager John Phillips. Meanwhile, loner Victor Banks is attracted to Alice. When she repels his advances,  he attacks her. The assault only ends when Reggie Symonds enters the stores and Victor runs off. Alice complains to her supervisor and the police are called. But the magistrate throws out the case. Hattie decides to take justice into her own hands. Alice’s mother Maggie argues with Victor’s mother, who discovers that Maggie’s cousin Ivy has been jailed for prostitution. Victor starts stalking Alice again, but Reggie begins to accompany her, and romance blossoms. The King announces a visit to the dockyard where the women plan to humiliate Victor. As a result, Victor is banished to Pembroke. But more tragedy is on the way…

• Frances Beaumont  (Memoir/biography)

A Life Without Hands - John Oliver and Me  

A candid memoir/biography of two unusual people and their love for each other. Set mainly on the River Medway, where John, born without hands, ran a tug; it also includes chapters about the Congo in the 1960s, where Frances was a UNA volunteer.

The challenges John faced with courage—from the day of his birth to his independence and incredible skills as an artist, chef, sailor, and tug skipper—are inspirational. His story weaves in and out of Frances’ own challenges, which are told with rare honesty and humour. 

Review by Helen: I could not put it down! Brilliant.

Review by Rustie: It’s the best book I’ve ever read.