Tower and Town, September 2020

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The Big Town Read

The 2020 Big Town Read is Platform Seven, the latest novel by Louise Doughty who was due to come to Marlborough for the festival. Every year the Marlborough LitFest, along with the support of local libraries, chooses a book which is suggested for local reading groups and individuals to read, ahead of the author appearing at the LitFest. The author event will take place as an online session at 6pm on Saturday 26 September during which the audience will be able to put questions to Louise. (Details for joining will be on www.marlbroughlitfest.org in early September.)

Louise Doughty is the bestselling author of nine novels. Her previous novel was the top 5 bestseller Apple Tree Yard, which was chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club, shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards Crime & Thriller of the Year and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, longlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize, and translated into over twenty languages. The novel was also turned into a successful television adaptation. She has won awards for radio drama and short stories; she is a critic and cultural commentator for UK and international newspapers and broadcasts regularly for the BBC.

Previous Big Town Read authors have included Laline Paull, Sathnam Sanghera, Jackie Kay, Rachel Joyce and Raynor Winn.

Hilary Mantel said of Platform Seven that “Louise Doughty leads her unnerved readers into dark territory.”

Platform Seven at 4am: Peterborough Railway Station is deserted. The man crossing the covered walkway on this freezing November morning is confident he’s alone. As he sits on the metal bench at the far end of the platform it is clear his choice is strategic – he’s as far away from the night staff as he can get.

What the man doesn’t realise is that he has company. Lisa Evans knows what he has decided. She knows what he is about to do as she tries and fails to stop him walking to the platform edge. Two deaths on Platform Seven. Two fatalities in eighteen months - surely they’re connected? No one is more desperate to understand what connects them than Lisa Evans herself. After all, she was the first of the two to die ....

Fran Del Mar