Thursday 16th November - 7.30pm Porteous, Juniper Green

Denise Mina and Douglas Skelton

Daggers and Discourse

Denise makes a welcome return to PBF. She has won the CWA Dagger for Best First Crime Novel; the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year twice, and the MacIlvanney Prize twice. Apart from novels, she has also written short stories, plays, and graphic novels, and is a presenter on TV and radio. In her latest novel Three Fires, Denise re-imagines the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the 15th century - inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola. Douglas has been a bank clerk, tax officer, taxi driver (two days), wine waiter (two hours), journalist and investigator. After several true crime and Scottish criminal history books, he now concentrates on fiction. His first Rebecca Connolly book was longlisted for the McIlvanney. In the latest, Children of the Mist, Fergus MacGregor disappears and is never seen again. Years later, Rebecca witnesses his mother holding a ritual in the Black Wood of Rannoch, a place Fergus loved. What happened in this last vestige of the Caledonian Forest? Does a family feud hold the key? Does an old recluse have the answers? Or is something malevolent hiding among the ancient trees? .