Edinburgh is home to a lot of tales, and here three authors have reimagined Auld Reekie in shades of thriller, gothic, crime and speculative fiction that will make you see the city in different ways.

In Fiona Erskine’s Phosphate Rocks, the old chemical works in Leith are demolished, and a body encrusted in phosphate is discovered; T.L. Huchu’s The Library of the Dead follows Ropa, who speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living, in turn calling on Zimbabwean magic and Scottish pragmatism to get answers; Kaite Welsh’s Sarah Gilchrist series follows the protagonist who joins the University of Edinburgh’s medical school in 1892 in search of an education, and is drawn to the murky underbelly of the city.

In conversation with Lee Randall, Edinburgh’s Underworlds showcases the brilliant stories lurking in Scotland’s capital.

Tickets are FREE. Book in advance to get sent reminders or go direct to YouTube https://youtu.be/jQiWRQl0mQ8 .

All events in The Scottish Books Long Weekend will be recorded and will be uploaded to the Publishing Scotland YouTube channel with closed captions on Tuesday 15 June.

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Fiona Erskine is a professional engineer and writer based in Teesside, England. She grew up in Edinburgh, studied Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University and has since travelled the world working in fertiliser factories, oil terminals and international construction projects. Her first thriller, The Chemical Detective was published in 2019 by the Point Blank imprint of OneWorld with the second in the series The Chemical Reaction published in 2020. A standalone novel Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects published with Sandstone Press in 2021. Fiona is a keen outdoor swimmer.

T.L. Huchu’s work has appeared in Lightspeed, Interzone, AfroSF, The Apex Book of World SF 5, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016, and elsewhere. He is the winner of a Nommo Award for African SFF, and has been shortlisted for the Caine Prize and the Grand prix de l’Imaginaire. He was one of the 2020 judges for the Scottish Book Trust's New Writers' Awards.

Kaite Welsh is an author, critic and journalist and the former Literature Officer at Creative Scotland. Her work has appeared in various newspapers and magazines from The Times Literary Supplement to Cosmopolitan. Her short fiction, featuring roller derby, Greek myths and ghosts, has been published in several anthologies and she guest lectures on Creative Writing at universities around the UK. She is the author of the Sarah Gilchrist series, and lives in Edinburgh with her wife, cats and a lot of books.

Lee Randall is a freelance writer, interviewer and festival programmer based in Edinburgh.

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This event is part of the Scottish Books Long Weekend 10 to 13 June. For the full programme, see BooksfromScotland.com/scottish-books-long-weekend/.

Books are available to buy from our bookshop partners Bookshop.org.