We're thrilled to be welcoming Sam Mills, Ben Pester and Nell Osborne to our Stockport shop in October to discuss their latest books The Watermark, The Expansion Project and Ghost Driver - three wildly exciting and inventive novels that playfully explore our existential fears of love, work and modern life. Sam, Ben and Nell will be in conversation with Valerie O'Riordan and the talk will be followed by an audience Q&A and booksigning.

Tickets start from £5 with ticket and book bundles available for each title plus the option to buy all three books for £35 (saving you £3.98) Light refreshments are included in the ticket price.

Event starts at 6:30pm (doors at 6pm)

About the books:

The Watermark - Sam Mills

Rachel and Jaime: their story isn't simple. It might not even be their story.

Augustus Fate, a once-lauded novelist and now renowned recluse, is struggling with his latest creation. But when Jaime and Rachel stumble into his remote cottage, he spies opportunity, imprisoning them inside his novel-in-progress. Now, the fledgling couple must try to find their way back home through a labyrinthine network of novels. 'And as they move from Victorian Oxford to a utopian Manchester, a harsh Russian winter to an AI-dominated near-future, so too does the narrative of their relationship change time and again. Together, they must figure out if this relationship of so many presents can have any future at all.

The Watermark is a heart-stopping exploration of the narratives we cling to in the course of a life, and the tendency of the world to unravel them. Kaleidoscopic and wildly imaginative, it asks: how can we truly be ourselves, when Fate is pulling the strings?

The Expansion Project - Ben Pester

Plans for the expansion of the Capmeadow Business Park are in full swing - its mission is to become the greatest business park in the region. Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee, loses his daughter at 'bring your daughter to work day'. He raises the alarm, and his colleagues rush to help him find her. Eventually, after no sign of her is found, it transpires she was never there. And yet, as time goes on, Tom still cannot reconcile that she is really at home. Refusing to accept that she is safe, Tom continues to search for her in the maze of corridors and impossible multi-dimensional spaces that make up his place of work...

Because Capmeadow is expanding in unexpected ways, a Liaison Officer becomes the central focus for complaints about how the expansion is impacting the lives of the employees - unexpected buildings, years-long business days, cursed farmers' markets, and corridors of the mind are draining the life from Tom and everyone he works with.

Years pass, and Tom remains at the company, convinced he is in the presence of his now adult daughter. But has he judged it correctly? And can anything go back to the way it was??

Ghost Driver - Nell Osborne

Malory walks home after an ordinarily gruelling night out, having escaped the company of her associates. Something ripples in the darkness. The shape of a figure. So begins a chain of events with the texture of dream plasma. A story of persecution mania. Professional ignominy. A sudden disappearance. The terror of seeing oneself too clearly...

Part horror story, part tragicomic nightmare, Ghost Driver is a slim shudder of a novel about a woman who has taken every wrong turn available to her.

About the authors:

Sam Mills is the author of The Quiddity of Will Self, along with three young adult novels, including the award-winning Blackout. Her memoir about being a carer, The Fragments of My Father, was published in 2020. Sam has written for a number of publications, including the Guardian, Independent, 3 AM and London Magazine. She is the co-founder of the independent press Dodo Ink and lives in London looking after her father and cat.

Ben Pester is the author of the short story collection Am I in the Right Place? He lives in London. The Expansion Project is his first novel.

Nell Osborne is a poet, novelist and researcher of experimental writing. In 2024, she published a poetry pamphlet, Thank You For Everything, with Monitor Books, and co-edited Gestures: a body of work, a cross-disciplinary anthology on gesture and feminist practice, published with MUP. Ghost Driver is her first novel.