Colin Walsh and Adam J. Leslie in conversation with Martha Lewis

We're delighted to be hosting the Manchester launch of Colin Walsh's KALA (out in paperback in July) and Adam J. Leslie's LOST IN THE GARDEN - two sinsister, haunting and beautifully written debuts set against the heat of the Summer. Colin and Adam will be in conversation with Martha Lewis.

Doors: 6.30, starts: 6.45

Tickets start from £3.00. KALA and LOST IN THE GARDEN will also be available to purchase on the night and Colin and Adam will both be signing copies after the talk. If you would like a signed copy but cannot make the event, please contact us on 0161 274 3331 or manchester@blackwell.co.uk and we can arrange this for you.

About the books:

Kala - Colin Walsh

In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland's west coast, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They - Helen, Joe and Mush - were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group's white-hot centre. Soon after that summer's peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.

Now it's fifteen years later. Human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala's disappearance, and to try to stop Kinlough's violent patterns repeating themselves once again..

Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smoulder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.

Lost in the Garden - Adam J. Leslie

Heather, Rachel and Antonia are going to Almanby.

Heather needs to find her boyfriend who, like so many, went and never came back.

Rachel has a mysterious package to deliver, and her life depends on it.

And Antonia - poor, lovestruck Antonia just wants the chance to spend the day with Heather.

So off they set through the idyllic yet perilous English countryside, in which nature thrives in abundance and summer lasts forever, and as they travel through ever-shifting geography and encounter strange voices in the fizz of shortwave radio, the harder it becomes to tell friend from foe.

Creepy, dreamlike, unsettling and unforgettable - you are about to join the privileged few who come to understand exactly why we don't go to Almanby.

About the authors:

Colin Walsh's short stories have won several awards including the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Prize and the Hennessy Literary Award. In 2019 he was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year. His writing has been published in the Stinging Fly, the Irish Times and broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. KALA is his first novel. He is from Galway and lives in Belgium.

Adam J. Leslie grew up in deepest rural Lincolnshire sometime in the 1980s, a child of Bagpuss, distant pylons and big red sunsets. He can now be found roaming the side-streets of Oxford or holed up in the big Blackwell’s bookshop daydreaming of stories and snacks. As well as an author, Adam is also a screenwriter, a musician and songwriter (under the name Berlin Horse), and produces and co-hosts RetroTube Archive Television Podcast with his best friend Heather.