Jarrold Spring Literary Lunch

Thursday 7 March, 12.30pm
Top of the Terrace, Norwich City Football Club

Join us for one of most popular events of the year!
We are delighted to welcome Kate Mosse, Donna Leon and another special guest. 

Menu

Individual Cottage Pie with pickled red cabbage
Apple and Almond Crumble with clotted cream ice-cream
Tea and Coffee

 Vegetarian

Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable Lasagne served with Mixed Salad with Sherry Vinegar Dressing

 

The Burning Chambers - Kate Mosse

Nineteen-year-old Minou Joubert receives an anonymous letter at her father’s bookshop. Sealed with a distinctive family crest, it contains just five words: SHE KNOWS THAT YOU LIVE.

But before Minou can decipher the mysterious message, a chance encounter with a young Huguenot convert, Piet Reydon, changes her destiny forever. For Piet has a dangerous mission of his own, and he will need Minou’s help if he is to get out of La Cité alive . . .

A thrilling adventure, and a heart-breaking love story, The Burning Chambers is a historical novel of pace, excitement, conspiracy and danger like no other . . .

“The Burning Chambers is a sequence of novels set against the backdrop of three hundred years of history, from sixteenth century France to nineteenth-century Southern Africa. The characters and their families, unless otherwise specified, are imagined, though inspired by the sort of people who might have lived. Ordinary women and men, struggling to live, love and survive against a backdrop of religious war and displacement.”

About the author

Kate Mosse is a number one international bestselling novelist, playwright and non-fiction writer. The author of six novels and short story collections – including the multimillionselling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel) and Gothic fiction The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she is adapting for the stage – her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and published in more than forty countries. She is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and a regular interviewer for theatre & fiction events.

Kate divides her time between Chichester in West Sussex and Carcassonne in south-west France. The second novel in The Burning Chambers series, The City of Tears – which is set in Paris, London and Amsterdam – will be published in May 2020.

Unto Us A Son Is Given - Donna Leon

"Your situation is always ambiguous, isn't it, Guido?," his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier, observes of Donna Leon's soulful detective, Guido Brunetti, at the beginning of her superb 28th Brunetti novel, Unto Us A Son Is Given. "The world we live in makes that necessary," Brunetti presciently replies. Count Falier was urging his Venetian son-in-law to investigate, and preferably intervene in, the seemingly innocent plan of the Count's best friend, the elderly Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejada, to adopt a much younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws this man would then be heir to Gonzalo's entire fortune, a prospect Gonzalo's friends find appalling. For his part, Brunetti wonders why the old man, a close family friend, can't be allowed his pleasure in peace.

And yet, what seems innocent on the Venetian surface can cause tsunamis beneath. Gonzalo unexpectedly, and literally, drops dead on the street, and one of his friends just arrived in Venice for the memorial service, is strangled in her hotel room--having earlier sent Gonzalo an email saying "We are the only ones who know you cannot do this," referring to the adoption. Now with an urgent case to solve, Brunetti reluctantly untangles the long-hidden mystery in Gonzalo's life that ultimately led to murder--a resolution that brings him way more pain than satisfaction.

Once again, Donna Leon brilliantly plumbs the twists and turns of the human condition, reuniting us with some of crime fiction's most memorable and enduring characters.

About the author

Donna Leon has lived in Venice for many years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; including Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Through A Glass, Darkly, Suffer the Little Children, The Girl of His Dreams, and most recently, About Face.

The Intelligence Trap - David Robson

Smart people are not only just as prone to making mistakes as everyone else - they may be even more susceptible to them. This is the ‘intelligence trap’ the subject of David Robson's fascinating and provocative debut.

The age-old adage of ‘being book smart but having no common sense’ is here proven to be more than true. Average IQ has increased consistently year on year (because we’re just getting smarter at passing the tests) but add to that, that people with higher IQs are more likely to exceed their credit limit or fall for fake news and the picture we’ve painted of ‘intelligence’ becomes much more complex.

The Intelligence Trap explores the many reasons that greater intelligence, knowledge and expertise can, and often do, backfire. Perhaps the best analogy is a car; a faster car can get you places more quickly if you know how to drive it correctly; but without the right knowledge, a fast car may just lead to you driving in circles – or straight into a ditch.

About the author

David Robson is a thirty-two-year-old, award-winning science journalist. He was the youngest-ever features editor at New Scientist and is currently a senior journalist at BBC Future, where he specialises in psychology, neuroscience and medicine. He regularly features on the radio discussing scientific issues, and his writing has also appeared in Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Atlantic and the Washington Post.