Join us for an evening with bestselling author Kate Mosse to celebrate her new novel The Map of Bones.
The Map of Bones is an epic story of adventure and hardship, dispossession and injustice. The sequel to the No. 1 bestselling The Ghost Ship – this epic adventure story is the fourth and final novel of The Joubert Family Chronicles series, bringing southern Africa in the 17th and 19th centuries to life.
Olifantshoek, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, is here to walk in her cousin’s footsteps. Louise Reydon-Joubert, the notorious she-captain and pirate commander, landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years ago, then disappeared from the record as if she had never existed. Suzanne has come to find her — to lay the stories to rest. But all is not as it seems . . .
Franschhoek, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family — Isabelle Lepard — has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. A journalist and travel writer, intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the tragedies and crimes of the past are far from over. Isabelle faces a race against time if she is not only going to discover the truth but escape with her life . . .
Kate Mosse CBE FRSL is an award-winning novelist, playwright, performer, interviewer and writer of history and memoir. The author of eleven novels and short-story collections, her books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and published in more than forty countries. Fiction includes the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre, Citadel), The Joubert Family Chronicles (The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears, The Ghost Ship, The Map of Bones) and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction The Taxidermist’s Daughter andThe Winter Ghosts. Her highly-acclaimed non-fiction includes An Extra Pair of Hands: A Story of Caring & Everyday Acts of Love and Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World, which inspired her one-woman theatre show. A regular guest on radio and television for literature, Kate hosts the pre-show interview series at Chichester Festival Theatre and is a regular interviewer for literary and arts festivals including Letters Live, the Hay Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the British Library and the Royal National Theatre. The Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction – the world’s largest annual literary awards celebrating writing by woman-she is also the founder of the global #WomanInHistory campaign. A trustee of the British Library, Kate is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Authors, a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and President of theFestival of Chichester. She was awarded a CBE in the King’s New Year’s Honours list 2024.
Tickets: £15 without book (admits one, ticket redeemable against a signed copy of The Map of Bones) or £25 with book (admits one, ticket includes a signed copy of The Map of Bones)