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The world-famous annual Agatha Christie Festival takes place on the English Riviera in South Devon, from 11th-18th September 2011. This spectacular annual festival celebrates the world's greatest crime fiction writer, Dame Agatha Christie and her best-known detectives, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. Read More

A few weeks ago we gave you the chance to write in with all the questions that you wanted to ask Mark, and we've finally got the answers! Anyone who has their question answered will win a copy of the book, so if you spot your question here and you haven't already provided us with your address then please it to  killerreads@harpercollins.co.uk and we will pop a copy in the post. Enjoy! I am also a motorcycle fan, and think I'd find it very difficult to not have a cameo of a motorcycle in anything I wrote. Do your real life interests ever come out in your books? Is it a struggle to stop this happening? Or do you just give in and let sports or bikes appear when appropriate? Beverley Funny that you should mention motorcycles - I can sense that one is going to appear in my next novel (after a forced break of one book)! I try and resist the temptation to pepper my stories with personal interests, although they inevitably work their way in, as indeed they should. It's good to write from a position of natural enthusiasm. Do you ever start a book and then leave it unfinished because you cannot find and end to the story? Jill Dawson Thankfully, this has only happened once. The Savage Garden started life as a story set in nineteenth century Java - the opening 60 pages of which still languish somewhere on my laptop's hard drive. After nine months of research, including an abortive trip to Indonesia, it became clear that I wasn't up to tackling a story of that size and complexity. Maybe one day I'll revisit it.   I have never read any of your work - why should I read your new novel? Jeff Hoyle The French Riviera in the 1930s, murder, intrigue, humour... how could you possibly resist, Jeff? Seriously, though, I like to think it's a gripping read which also offers a glimpse of a fascinating period of European history. What would be the one piece of advice you would give someone starting out as a serious crime writer? Sarah Eastham Read More

  The second book in this highly acclaimed new series featuring Giordano Bruno has already been described as ‘impossible to resist' by The Daily Telegraph. This time it's Autumn, 1583, and Queen Elizabeth's rule is under threat.Giordano Bruno, the maverick and charismatic agent of Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to the queen, has infiltrated plotters at the French embassy. But his position there is tenuous - while the ambassador trusts him, his beautiful and cunning wife Marie seems determined to prise out his secrets. Meanwhile, the murder of a maid of honour within the palace walls involves Bruno in deeper mysteries. Occult symbols carved into her young flesh point to black magic, but the truth could be even more sinister... All we can do is echo The Times, 'More, please' and we hope you'll think the same.  In order to get your hands on a copy of S. J. Parris' brilliant new Giordano Bruno historical thriller, all you have to do is read this passage and answer the following question... Read More

This was the question we all puzzled over for weeks after reading The End Specialist. At our desks, in the staff kitchen, over the photocopier - we couldn't stop talking about it, so when we put the question to you in our last article we decided to put our opinions down, too. In The End Specialist, taking the cure for aging isn't a cure for death. You can still be shot, die from disease or get hit by a car. When you take the cure your age is frozen in place, so you'll look the same way you look when you take it as long as you live. Interested? To find out more about it check out this site or read an extract. And as for the Killer Reads Team's thoughts on the matter... Read More

‘I took my picture again this morning. Still the same. The nose. The eyes. The brow. The chin. Nothing has sagged. No creases have formed. I scrolled through the “Face” folder in my library to compare it with the others.’ And it’s been this way for the last… Read More

From hairdryers at dawn to radio 6 at dusk with the odd courtroom thrown in along the way, we give you a day in the life of Neil White. Most days start with the noise of the hairdryer at around seven.  My wife gets up before I do, and so her hairdryer stirs me. I don't spring into action exactly.  I have to get the children packed off for school. We've got three noisy boys, thirteen year old and ten year old twins, and so I spend a blurry hour lost in a flurry of making breakfasts and putting together packed lunches and getting myself ready. Once they are all sent on their way, scrubbed and fed, I set off for my day job.  As well as being a writer, I'm a solicitor by profession, and work as a prosecutor in the north west of England. My days are a mix of courtrooms, office work and providing advice to the police. I enjoy the courtroom the most. I like the drama, the arguments, and it is what attracted me to being a criminal lawyer. If I'm in one of the remand courts, I spend the day working through a pile of files, trying to keep people in custody if they ought to stay there, and agreeing that they shouldn't be in prison if that's the right thing to do. As I drive into work, I never know what I will face. It could be something as mundane as shoplifters, or as dramatic as a murder. If I'm not in a remand court, I conduct trials, anything from assaults and thefts to routine road traffic cases.   Read More

Richard Shephard interviews Maj Sjowall.     Q: The series has a strong international feel, especially in the first two books, with the influx of tourists in Roseanna and the complex business of passports, hotels and border crossings in The Man Who Went up in Smoke. Did you give them this to expand the canvas, as it were?   The idea for Roseanna came to us when we took a boat on the Göta Canal in Sweden and the boat was full of American tourists. Roseanna was modelled on a beautiful American girl whom I realized Per was observing a bit too closely, so I suggested that she be the victim.We were sent to Budapest by a Swedish film company to do research for a screenplay on the disappearance of Raul Wallenberg. The film was never made, but we fell in love with the city and decided to go there to write our second novel. Read More

We're all massive Mark fans here in the KR office so when he popped into the office we thought we'd take the chance to get to know him a bit better! Find out about his new book and look out for the chance to ask him your own question and to win a copy of his new book! What inspired you to write House of the Hanged? Strangely, the book would never have been written if I hadn't been robbed while backpacking through the south of France when I was 17. This is how I first came to know Le Rayol, where the story is set. Some friends of my travelling companion lived there, and they kindly put us up for a few dreamy days while we waited for my replacement traveller's cheques to arrive. I was very struck by that stretch of coast, with its rocky headlands and its sandy coves of unnaturally white sand. In many ways, the novel is the coming together of this memory and a book I love: Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford, her biographical account of growing up near Toulon in the 1920s. Read More

We were lucky enough to get up close and personal with Neil White, the author of the chilling Cold Kill. If there are any questions we haven't thought of then get in touch and let us know what you want to know about Neil! 1. If you were stranded on a desert island, which book would you take with you? Although To Kill A Mockingbird first came to mind, because it is the only book I have wanted to start reading again as soon as I'd finished it, I would choose Shoeless Joe by WP Kinsella. It's a whimsical tale of unfulfilled dreams set in Iowa, although the film adaptation is probably better known, Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner. 2. Where does your inspiration come from? If you mean my inspiration to write, it comes from other great books. When I read a really good book, I just think that I would love to write a book as good as that. If you mean for my plots, it just comes from real life. It's a real tragedy that there are so many people willing to do horrific things to other human beings, but I am intrigued by their motivations, their thought processes, and how they can live with their guilt. Read More

In the still of the night and at weekends here in my flat at the Barbican I can hear the bells of St Paul's either marking the hour or summoning the faithful to prayer. Today, surrounded by proud towers of glass and steel, it is hard to imagine how much the cathedral dominated the skyline of the City in the 1930s. Some might say its spiritual power has diminished as its fluted dome has slowly disappeared behind the monuments to Mammon. Today, however, to walk beneath its vaulted ceilings or simply past its vast walls of Portland stone - now free of scaffolding for the first time in 15 years - still fills you with a sense of awe whether or not you're religious. Read More

HarperCollins has teamed up with Marie Claire and Malmaison to offer you a series of How to Get Published events. Featuring one of HarperCollins’ top women’s fiction authors, Lindsey Kelk, and a panel of experts including a literary agent, publishing director and a member of the Marie Claire features team, you will discover what it really takes to get your own book published. Read More

It’s the thriller of the moment, but what do the authors (yes, authors – there’s two of them) have to say for themselves? We decided that it was time for us to find out…… Read More