Book club

Whilst former BBC News boss James Harding has yet to surface formally with a new venture, his wife Kate hopes to add to the family's fortunes with her first novel next year. Called "The Truants", placed by mega-agents Janklow & Nesbit with Bloomsbury (where works Mrs James Purnell), it's set for publication in Spring 2019. Here's the blurb...

In this seductive coming-of-age debut, Jess Walker, a young and uninitiated first year student, falls in love with two great story-tellers. One, Alec, a journalist in exile, the other, Lorna, a charismatic literature professor. Starting out under the flat grey skies of an east Anglian university campus and ending up on an idyllic Mediterranean island, The Truants is about a group of clever and eccentric misfits who yearn to break the rules. As Jess’ experience of infatuation and betrayal, disappearance and loss gives way to a breathless search for the truth, she finds herself detective in a twisted crime of the heart. Unsettling, challenging, surprisingly funny and beautifully written, The Truants is a compulsively readable literary debut with a twist – and a dead body to boot.

Kate, formerly interviewer/travel writer/gardening columnist with The Telegraph, also has a new photo.