The Library Room, The Feathers Hotel, 25 High Street, Ledbury HR8 1DS

7:30pm Thursday 22 May 2025

Ledbury Books and Maps is delighted to announce that its crime writing festival, Ledburied, is hosting an evening with Belinda Bauer and Sharon Bolton.


Belinda Bauer started out as a journalist and then took ages to fail at screenwriting (her words) before penning Blacklands, which won the CWA Gold Dagger. Since then she has written ten crime novels and a thriller called High Rollers under the name Jack Bowman. In 2018 she was nominated for the Booker Prize for her novel, Snap. Her latest novel, The Impossible Thing, was published in February 2025. Belinda grew up in England and South Africa, and now lives in Wales.



Sharon Bolton grew up in a cotton-mill town in Lancashire. Her second novel, Awakening, won the 2010 Mary Higgins Clark award in the US. In 2014, Sharon was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library. She has been shortlisted for the CWA Gold and Steel Daggers, the Theakston's prize, and the International Thriller Writers' Best First Novel award. With seventeen books to her name, Sharon is a Sunday Times bestselling author and has been described by that newspaper as being ‘unable to write a sentence not suffused with menace.' Her latest book, The Neighbour's Secret, was published in November 2024.

---

Tickets are just £8 and are available from

Ledbury Books and Maps (from the shop, 01531 633226 or online)

7:30pm Thursday 10 July

The Upper Floor, The Old Grammar School, Church Lane, Ledbury HR8 1DW

Ledbury Books and Maps is delighted to announce that its crime writing festival, Ledburied, is hosting an evening with Laura Shepherd-Robinson and Andrew Taylor.

Laura Shepherd-Robinson worked in politics for nearly twenty years before re-entering normal life to complete an MA in Creative Writing.
Her debut novel, Blood & Sugar, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and won the HWA Debut Crown. Her latest novel, The Art of a Lie, has been called a ‘most artfully constructed novel, which toys with our emotions and plays havoc with our expectations. (Laura) has an almost supernatural knowledge of contemporary confectionery skills and the art of the sophisticated con-trick … historical crime fiction doesn’t get any better than this’.



Andrew Taylor is the winner of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger (for lifelong excellence in the genre), the HWA Gold Crown for best historical novel of the year, and the triple winner of the CWA Historical Dagger. He has published over 45 books, including The American Boy, the Roth Trilogy (filmed for TV as Fallen Angel), and the Lydmouth detective series set in the 1950s. His latest book A Schooling in Murder is described as ‘a wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant’.

---

Tickets are just £8 and are available from

Ledbury Books and Maps (from the shop, 01531 633226 or online)

7:30pm Thursday 23 October

The Upper Floor, The Old Grammar School, Church Lane, Ledbury HR8 1DW


Ledbury Books and Maps is delighted to announce that its crime writing festival, Ledburied, is hosting an evening with Alis Hawkins and Clare Mackintosh on 23 October.

Alis Hawkins grew up in Ceredigion and currently lives in the Forest of Dean. Her Teifi Valley Coroner historical crime series has twice been shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Historical Dagger. The first in her Oxford Mysteries series, A Bitter Remedy, was shortlisted for the 2024 Historical Dagger. Alis is a founder member of Welsh crime writers’
collective Crime Cymru and was the inaugural chair of Wales’ only crime writing festival, Crime Cymru Festival.

Clare Mackintosh is a former police officer and the multi-award-winning author of eight bestselling novels. Her books have sold more than three million copies and been translated into 40 languages, collectively spending more than 65 weeks in The Sunday Times top ten. Her latest series, featuring DC Ffion Morgan, is set on the border between North Wales and Cheshire.

---

Tickets are just £8 and are available from

Ledbury Books and Maps (from the shop, 01531 633226 or online)