Aye Write’s Ones To Watch - Kate Foster, Chris Carse Wilson and Angie Spoto

Aye Write prides itself on spotlighting new talent and punchy stories. Debut novels by Kate Foster, Chris Carse Wilson and Angie Spoto will feature in this ‘Ones To Watch’ event which platforms some of the best new writers in Scottish fiction. The authors will all be in conversation with Sara Sheridan.

Kate Foster’s The Maiden is inspired by a real-life case - a remarkable story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history. It’s Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess. The Maiden is a winner of the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect Award.

Chris Carse Wilson's haunting novel Fray has distinct elements of folk horror, and the story places a family in dreadful jeopardy in a sinister abandoned cottage in the Scottish Highlands. A father who is trying to rescue his lost wife. Their child, desperately searching the wild forests and dangerous mountains of the Scottish Highlands, not knowing what's out there. An abandoned cottage in the remote wilderness, filled with thousands of confusing, terrifying handwritten notes. And a dark, looming voice who threatens to destroy everything. Eerie and ethereal, Fray is an unsettling quest in the unforgiving Scottish Highlands.

The Grief Nurse from Angie Spoto is a novel of romance, intrigue and spectacular gothic world-building which is immersive and unforgettable. Imagine you could be rid of your sadness, your anxiety, your heartache, your fear. Imagine you could take those feelings from others and turn them into something beautiful. Lynx is a Grief Nurse. Kept by the Asters, a wealthy, influential family, to ensure they're never troubled by negative emotions, she knows no other life. When news arrives that the Asters' eldest son is dead, Lynx does what she can to alleviate their sorrow. As guests flock to the Asters' private island for the wake, bringing their own secrets, lies and grief, tensions rise. Then the bodies start to pile up.