North Books in Hay-on-Wye (the Welsh book-town) welcomes a debut crime writer on September 5 for its next event.

Rev. Penny Stephens was a vicar in a village parish before working as a hospice chaplain in East London and Kent. She now takes services in the Diocese of Rochester, where she is an Honorary Canon of the Cathedral. Till Death Us Do Part is Penny’s debut novel although she is well underway with the second case for Rev. Clare to be set in Cornwall.

Rev. Penny will be in conversation with the bookshop’s own mistress of the crime section (aka Miss Scarlett) Jo Farrell - who is as familiar with a good crime novel as she is a skein of hand-died yarn. What hi-jinks will these two ladies plot on the evening…? Book in to find out! Tickets are free but limited so email the bookshop [email protected] or pop in to reserve.

Penny is also going to officially open the new crime section in the bookshop!

"Baddies get their comeuppance and goodies prevail," Jo says. "In this uncertain world we live in, people find that reassuring."

The book centres on Reverend Clare Brakespear who is used to a challenge. - with a young family to wrangle, a parish to manage and a particularly excitable Golden Retriever by her side, life is never dull.

But when she attends a wedding where one of the guests is fatally stabbed with a cake knife, even Clare admits that she might have been given too much to handle this time as she soon finds herself embroiled in a complex web of family secrets and deceptions. Is she in way over her head or can she find the real killer before an innocent woman is sent down?