Meet the Author
with
Cathy Hayward
Thursday 21st November, 7pm
at The Rabbit Hole, Brigg
Pay What You Can - Tickets required
Please note that due to space restrictions in the bookshop, tickets are required and we recommend early booking to avoid disappointment.
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About The Secret of the Brighton House
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The Brighton House: A heart-wrenching story with a mystery at its heart
A lifetime apart. A lifetime of secrets. Sometimes you might not want the truth.
Brighton, 1974: Grace Bennet is expecting her first child. She's positive the baby will be a girl, and she's wrapped up in the excitement of readying the nursery and shopping for tiny clothes. Surrounded by her husband, Mike, and her best friend, Susie, Grace can't think of a happier time, but, as her pregnancy progresses, complications begin to arise, and Grace's life as she knows it begins to shift.
Berwick-upon-Tweed, Now: Joanne Shaw is looking forward to motherhood after rounds and rounds of IVF. She and her husband Alex are still feeling a little shocked, and the only surprise they want now is to find out if the baby is a girl or a boy. But when her father, Mike, and step-mum bring along Joanne’s old baby things, she finds a photo of Mike and birth mother, Grace, holding her as a newborn outside the Brighton house. The problem is... Joanne was told her mother died in childbirth.
Reeling from this shocking discovery, Joanne needs to find out the truth. Why would Mike lie to her? Why did he move her so far away from Brighton? And why won't he talk to her now? With her questions stonewalled by her father, Joanne is terrified of what his silence means. But desperate to know what really happened to Grace, Joanne delves into the past to uncover this long-buried secret that will change her life.
This captivating story of two women, trying to find their places as mothers, wives, and women, linked by a devastating secret is perfect for fans of Joanna Glen, Eve Chase, and Kate Morton.
About Cathy Hayward
Cathy Hayward is a writer, bookseller and manages a creative writing school.
She trained as a journalist and edited a variety of trade publications, several of which were so niche they were featured on Have I Got News for You. She then moved into the world of PR and set up an award-winning PR agency. In 2022, after having spent a lifetime pottering around bookshops, she bought Kemptown Bookshop in Brighton and has worked hard to create a community hub which supports local authors and aspiring writers. In 2023, she took on joint management of The Creative Writing Programme, the leading independent centre for creative writing teaching in the south-east of England, which is now based at the bookshop. She runs the 5am Writing Club which meets at the bookshop once a month.
Devastated and inspired in equal measure by the death of her parents in quick succession in 2016, Cathy completed the two-year Creative Writing Programme course out of which emerged her debut novel The Girl in the Maze about the experience of mothering and being mothered. It won Agora Books’ Lost the Plot Work in Progress Prize 2020 and was longlisted for the Grindstone Literary Prize 2020 and Flash500 2020. It was published by Agora in November 2021. She then signed a three-book deal with Lake Union and her next book The Secret of the Brighton House is due out in November 2024. She’s currently working on her third novel.
When she’s not writing (or reading), Cathy loves pottering in other people’s bookshops, drinking wine and going to the theatre. She lives in Brighton – sandwiched between the Downs and the sea – with her three children and two rescue cats.
