Special Guest Announcement for 2014 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, Harrogate

Gillian Flynn and Laura Lippman to appear In Conversation at the 2014 Festival We are delighted to announce that US authors Gillian Flynn and Laura Lippman will appear together on the Harrogate stage for a very special In Conversation event next year.  These two American stars join a list of stellar names, which include the likes of Ann Cleeves, Sophie Hannah, Lynda LaPlante, Peter May. Steve Mosby and S. J. Watson. Gillian Flynn’s 2006 debut novel, the literary mystery Sharp Objects, was an Edgar Award finalist, and her second novel, the 2009 New York Times bestseller Dark Places, was a New Yorker Reviewers’ Favourite, Weekend Today Top Summer Read, Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009, and Chicago Tribune Favourite Fiction choice. Movie rights for both of these novels have been sold. Flynn’s third novel, the contemporary thriller Gone Girl, came out in 2012 and has been an international best seller, sitting at  #1 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list for an astonishing eight weeks, and will be on screens in autumn 2014 with Ben Affleck cast as Nick and Rosamund Pike in the role of Amy. Reviewers around the world have praised the novel's innovative use of unreliable narration, plot twists, and suspense. Flynn is published in 28 countries, and this will be the second appearance in Harrogate for the Chicago based novelist, following her stellar ‘America’s Got Talent’ panel appearance in 2012. Among her many writing influences, Flynn cites Lippman as a mystery writer who has had an impact on her work. Laura Lippman has been awarded every major prize in crime fiction, and she returns to Harrogate for her fifth appearance in 2014. Since the publication of What the Dead Know, each of her hardcovers has hit the New York Times bestseller list. A recent recipient of the first-ever Mayor's Prize, she lives in Baltimore, New Orleans and New York City with her family. One of the most acclaimed novelists in America today, Lippman has greatly expanded the boundaries of mystery fiction and psychological suspense with her Tess Monaghan p.i. series and her New York Times bestselling standalone novels which include The Most Dangerous Thing and I’d Know You Anywhere. Her latest novel And When She Was Good is out now in paperback, in which Lippman delivers a brilliant story about a woman with a secret life who is forced to make desperate choices to save her son and herself. The brand new After I'm Gone, an addictive story that explores how one man’s disappearance echoes through the lives of the wife, mistress, and daughters he left behind, is released in April 2014.