We're so excited to welcome debut writer Kate Foster to store to discuss her thrilling novel The Maiden.

Set in Edinburgh in 1679, The Maiden is based on a real-life murder trial. We'll be sitting down with Kate to discuss the book, the true story that inspired it and what it took to bring this book to life. 

Tickets are £5 and can be redeemed against any purchase on the evening of the event. 

About the book

Inspired by a real-life case and winner of the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect Award, Kate Foster's The Maiden is a remarkable story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history.

'In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me.'

Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian Nimmo 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.

Only a year before, Christian was leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn't the only woman in Forrester's life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead.

About the author 

Kate Foster has been a national newspaper journalist for over twenty years and is the Health Editor for the Scottish Daily Mail.

She won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect 2020 prize for new writers for her debut novel The Maiden, which she wrote on a Curtis Brown Creative six-month novel writing course. The Maiden will be published in April 2023. 

She lives near Edinburgh with her two children.

If you have any questions regarding the event or to request any additional accessibility accommodations please contact hello@rarebirdsbooks.com