Tickets for the 2025 Yeovil Literary Festival are now on sale, with an outstanding programme of bestselling authors, celebrated speakers and creative talent.
Yeovil Library is working in partnership with:
- Yeovil Town Council’s Westlands Entertainment Venue
- Octagon Theatre
- Waterstones Yeovil
- Yeovil Community Arts Association
and is set to be part of another fabulous festival.
Councillor Federica Smith-Roberts, Somerset Council Lead Member for Communities, Culture and Equalities and Diversity, said:
We’re thrilled to announce the 2025 Yeovil Literary Festival, which promises to be an outstanding celebration of literature and creativity.
With a fantastic line up of bestselling authors, celebrated speakers, and creative talent, this year’s festival is set to inspire and captivate audiences. We encourage everyone to book their tickets early and join us for what promises to be a memorable event.
Now established as one of the South West’s leading cultural festivals, the 2025 festival runs from 17 to 27 October, with over 60 events taking place, that will inspire and leave you wanting to hear more.
Yeovil Library has a fabulous line-up for this year, so don’t miss out as tickets are selling fast. To book your tickets visit Yeovil Literary Festival 2025 or phone 01935 422884.
Friday, 17 October at 12pm
Claire Douglas – The New Neighbours
Yeovil library. Tickets £6.
We are delighted that bestselling author Claire Douglas will be joining us to chat about her latest thriller The New Neighbours.
Lena overhears a conversation she shouldn’t have. She’s sure her new neighbours – the Morgans – are planning a crime. Her family say she’s mistaken. They are a lovely, friendly couple. She should forget it.
Yet Lena can’t. And the more she investigates, the worse her suspicions. But Lena hasn’t counted on one thing. A secret from her own past. One the Morgans seem connected to. And which puts Lena in terrible danger…
Claire Douglas worked as a journalist for 15 years but had dreamed of being a novelist since the age of 7. She finally got her wish after winning the Marie Claire Debut Novel Award with her first novel, The Sisters. She is a Sunday Times bestseller and a frequent Richard and Judy Book Club pick. Her books have sold nearly 2 million copies in the UK alone.
Friday, 17 October at 2pm
Damien Boyd – Deceived by the Light
Yeovil Library. Tickets £6.
For crime lovers of Detective Inspector Nick Dixon, we are thrilled to announce that author Damien Boyd will be introducing us to his new character, DCI Bob Willis. Damien’s new book, Deceived by the Light, is set in Ilminster and the surrounding area. Bob is convinced an innocent man has been framed, leaving a serial killer cruising the A303 with impunity, free to target lone women who have broken down by the roadside late at night.
An innocent man framed. A case closed. A serial killer free to kill again.
It is 1985. Detective Inspector Mungo ‘Bob’ Willis is being forced out of Avon and Somerset Police on medical grounds. His career is in tatters, his body broken, his mind shattered, and his partner – DS Lizzie Harper – dead in a sting operation gone wrong.
Their last case is closed, but Bob is convinced an innocent man has been framed, leaving a serial killer cruising the A303 with impunity, free to target lone women who have broken down by the roadside late at night.
The killer knows the police aren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the murders. What they don’t know is what Bob will do next.
And when another woman is killed in horrifyingly similar circumstances, Bob launches his own – unofficial – investigation. Can he stop a sadistic killer before they kill again? And again.
Damien Boyd is a former solicitor turned crime fiction writer. Drawing on extensive experience of criminal law as well as a spell in the Crown Prosecution Service, he writes fast paced crime thrillers.
Friday, 17 October at 4pm
Emma Stonex – The Sunshine Man
Yeovil Library. Tickets £6.
We are so excited that bestselling author Emma Stonex is part of this years’ festival. Her new book The Sunshine Man is the story of a terrible crime that shakes a community, and a revenge plotted over decades. It is a tangled mystery about love, grief and how our childhood experiences play out in the rest of our lives.
Birdie wakes to the news she’s been waiting 18 years to hear: Jimmy Maguire – the man who murdered her sister – is out of prison. She sends her children to school, picks up a gun, and leaves for London with one purpose: to find Jimmy and make him pay. But there’s another side to this story, and Birdie is about to enter a world of family lies, worn-out loyalties and long-buried betrayals…
After working in publishing for several years, Emma Stonex quit to pursue her dream of writing fiction. The Lamplighters was an instant book lover’s favourite and Sunday Times bestseller.
Saturday, 18 October at 12pm
Harriet Evans – The Treasures
Yeovil Library. Tickets £6.
What a treat we have in store! Harriet Evans will be chatting about her gorgeous new family trilogy, The Treasures. Book one is about Tom Raven and Alice Jansen, how they meet, the secret that binds them, and what brings them together. It is a story of their love, life and home, of their beginning and their ending, over 50 years and 3 generations.
Every family’s story starts somewhere. Alice and Tom’s begin here. On the eve of her 16th birthday, Alice Jansen collects her treasures – the keepsakes, figurines and mementoes that help her make sense of her fragile family. But the next day her heart is broken, and the final treasure, a gift from her father, is lost. 2 years later, Alice answers a phone call from a stranger and runs away to New York and tries to forget her last golden summer at the orchard on the banks of the Hudson.
Tom Raven can’t understand why he keeps losing so many of the things and people that really matter to him, but he knows for certain that something important is missing from his life. One day, he remembers a forgotten letter and makes a phone call, then leaves Sevenstones, the only place that feels like home, for a strange city…
Harriet Evans is the author of 13 bestselling novels, most recently The Beloved Girls, a Richard and Judy Book Club Selection and the Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller The Garden of Lost and Found, which won Good Housekeeping’s Book of the Year.
Saturday, 18 October at 2pm
Sarah Easter Collins – Things Don’t Break on Their Own
Yeovil Library. Tickets £6.
We are thrilled that author Sarah Easter Collins will be chatting about her brilliantly received debut novel Things Don’t Break on Their Own, with bestselling author, Hazel Prior.
Nobody ever found out what happened to Laika Martenwood, the girl who vanished without a trace on her way to school one morning. But for her sister Willa, life shattered into tiny pieces that day, and she has never been able to put them back together again.
But when a dinner party conversation about childhood memories spirals out of control, a shattering revelation from one of the guests forces Willa to rethink everything she thought she knew about her past. And, out of the debris of that explosive evening, the truth of what really happened begins to emerge. Piece by piece.
Sarah Easter Collins grew up in Kent and studied at Exeter University before moving to Botswana, and later Thailand and Malawi, as part of the Teachers for Botswana Recruitment Scheme where she was posted to Maun, a village on the edge of the Okavango Delta – there she lived in a rondavel, bought a bicycle, adopted some stray animals, and was never happier. When not writing, she works as an artist.
Saturday, 18 October at 4pm
Sally Smith – A Case of Life and Limb
Yeovil Library. Tickets £6.
We are delighted that author Sally Smith will be sharing tales of her historical detective story introducing Gabriel Ward, in her second book A Case of Life and Limb.
1901. Gabriel Ward KC is hard at work on a thorny libel case involving London’s most famous music hall star and its most notorious tabloid newspaper, but the Inner Temple remains as quiet and calm as ever. Quiet, that is, until the mummified hand arrives in the post…
While the hand’s recipient, Temple Treasurer Sir William Waring, is rightfully shaken, Gabriel is filled with curiosity. Who would want to send such a thing? And why? But as more parcels arrive – one with fatal consequences – Gabriel realises that it is not Sir William who is the target, but the Temple itself.
Someone is holding a grudge that has led to at least one death. It is up to Gabriel, and Constable Wright of the City of London Police, to find out who before the body count gets any higher. The game’s afoot.
Sally Smith spent all her working life as a barrister and later KC in the Inner Temple. After writing a biography of the Edwardian barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, she retired from the bar to write full time. A Case of Mice and Murder, her acclaimed first novel, was chosen as Waterstones Book of the Month and was inspired by the historic surroundings of the Inner Temple in which she still lives and works and by the rich history contained in its archives.
