Join us for the Manchester launch of Ainslie Hogarth’s MOTHERTHING and Marieke Bigg’s WAITING FOR TED – two delightfully dark new books which peek behind the curtain of the suburban dream to reveal that all is not as it seems…

About the books:

Motherthing – Ainslie Hogarth (Atlantic Books)

Abby Lamb has done it. She’s found the Great Good in her husband, Ralph, and together they will start a family and put all the darkness in her childhood to rest. But then the Lambs move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, whose depression has made it impossible for her to live on her own. She’s venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, who has a complicated understanding of motherhood given the way her own, now-estranged, mother raised her.

When Laura takes her own life, her ghost starts to haunt Abby and Ralph in very different ways. Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is being terrorized by a force intent on taking everything she loves away from her. With everything on the line, Abby must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to prove her adoration to Ralph and break Laura’s hold on the family for good.

Ainslie Hogarth is the author of The Lonely, The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated), and Motherthing. You can find her short fiction in Hazlitt, Black Static, and more.

Waiting for Ted – Marieke Bigg (Dead Ink)

“After all these years, I was surprised to find that we were still in the process of trying to assemble two fully self-sustaining parts into one.”

Waiting For Ted charts the destruction of Rosalind and Ted’s relationship at the hands of an expensive chaise longue. Rosie comes from a wealthy, upperclass background. She dreams of being a traditional housewife to her big strong working man, cooking, tending the house and instagramming her perfect life. But she also needs to fill her house with things that she can Instagram, so when Ted bans her from spending any more of her father’s money on her ‘work’ as an interior design influencer until she’s actually earning, she begins to scheme – only to watch her schemes unravel, and the rest of her life with them.

Told in a series of reflections over the course of an evening spent waiting for Ted, Rosie charts her relationship’s downfall, how she drifted from her only friend (who she never really liked anyway), how she contributed to the breakdown in her parents’ marriage, how she never really let Ted into her perfect world, how she drove them to their spectacular breakdown, and as she does it becomes increasingly clear to the reader that Ted may not be coming home at all.

Marieke Bigg studied her PhD on the social history of IVF at Cambridge University and is the author of non-fiction title Misdiagnosed which considers how medicine has failed the female body. Waiting for Ted is her debut fiction novel.

Doors: 6.30, event starts: 6.45

Tickets are £3 or free when purchasing a copy of either book. Motherthing and Waiting For Ted will also be available to purchase on the night and Ainslie and Marieke will be signing copies after the talk. If you would like a signed copy but cannot make the event, please contact us on 0161 274 3331 or manchester@blackwell.co.uk and we can arrange this for you.