Nat Reeve and Emma Hinds in conversation with Hannah MacDonald

We're absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Nat Reeve and Emma Hinds to the shop to discuss EARLYFATE and THE KNOWING - two delightfully thrilling historical novels with a queer twist! Nat and Emma will be in converstaion with Hannah MacDonald, host of a A Pair of Bookends podcast.

Doors: 6.30, starts: 6.45

Tickets start from £4.00. EARLYFATE and THE KNOWING will also be available to purchase on the night and both authors will be signing copies after the talk. If you would like a signed copy but cannot make the event, please contact us on or [email protected] and we can arrange this for you.

About the books:

Earlyfate - Nat Reeve

"The whole Division will sneer when they read this, I know it. But how, praytell, was I to discern just how wrong it would go?"

Pip Property is no stranger to disaster. Typically, they’ve got a plan, but now Dallyangle’s favourite dandy & part-time criminal is locked in the morgue of the crime-fighting Division gone rogue, accused of far more crimes than they’ve actually committed, with (at least) two bucolic burglars out to strangle them with their own cravat. Their lover – the semi-feral Welsh heiress Rosamond Nettleblack – has disappeared into dangerous hands. Enlisting the Division to save Rosamond might be Pip’s only hope, but the cravat designer and the chaotic vigilantes have never seen eye to eye. The Division is looking to prove themselves to a potential new patron – and trusting schemers like Pip is a risk the detectives don’t want to take.

Armed only with a borrowed notebook, threadbare charm, suits without cravat pins, and a swordstick everyone keeps confiscating, Pip must get the Division on-side, convince them that faith is a thing they can still have, and unravel the truth behind Rosamond’s disappearance before it’s too late.

From the author of Nettleblack, Earlyfate throws us back into the same madcap Neo-Victorian world, where queerness is a given and chaos is mandatory.

The Knowing - Emma Hinds

In the slums of 19th-century New York.

A tattooed mystic fights for her life.

Her survival hangs on the turn of a tarot card.

Powerful, intoxicating and full of suspense. The Knowing is a darkly spellbinding novel about a girl fighting for her survival in the decaying criminal underworlds.

Whilst working as a living canvas for an abusive tattoo artist, Flora meets Minnie, an enigmatic circus performer who offers her love and refuge in an opulent townhouse, home to the menacing Mr Chester Merton. Flora earns her keep reading tarot cards for his guests whilst struggling to harness her gift, the Knowing - an ability to summon the dead. Caught in a dark love triangle between Minnie and Chester, Flora begins to unravel the secrets inside their house.

The Knowing is a stunning debut inspired by real historical characters including Maud Wagner, one of the first known female tattoo artists, New York gang the Dead Rabbits, and characters from PT Barnum's circus.

About the authors:

Nat Reeve is a novelist and a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing. Nat has a PhD in Victorian Studies from Royal Holloway, and their debut novel Nettleblack was published by Cipher Press in 2022. Nettleblack follows a gang of queer misfit Victorian detectives causing chaos in a small country town; it was a 2022 Fiction Book of the Year at LRB Bookshop and Blackwell’s Manchester, and a Bookseller Fave of the Year at Waterstones Trafford Centre.

Emma Hinds is a queer playwright living in Manchester with a focus on telling untold feminist narratives. Her latest play, PURE, was featured in Turn On festival at Hope Mill Theatre Manchester and she was the recipient of the Artist Development grant. She has written an essay published in Tarantino and Theology with Gray Matter Books, and her book Ineffable Love: Christian Themes in Good Omens was published by Darton Longman & Todd.

Host or Publisher Blackwell's Manchester