In conversation: Nikki Gemmell

Join Nikki Gemmell, in conversation with Catherine Milne, to celebrate the release of her new novel Wing, in-store at Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore.

WHEN: Wednesday, 16th October, 2024, at Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore. Please arrive at 6:45pm for a prompt 7pm start.

TICKETS: 

Admission: $25.00 (excluding external fees), includes admission for one, a glass of wine and nibbles upon arrival.

Admission + Book Bundle: $55.00 (excluding external fees), includes admission for one, a copy of Wing by Nikki Gemmell (RRP: $34.95), a glass of wine and nibbles upon arrival.

An explosive, contemporary literary thriller from international bestselling author Nikki Gemmell - Wing is Lord of the Flies meets Picnic at Hanging Rock meets Promising Young Woman.

About Wing:

Students from an elite girls' school go on a camping trip into the Australian bush. Four of them - a girl gang, a group of best friends dubbed 'The Cins' by the teachers - become separated from the main group. A male teacher volunteers to look for them.

None of the five come back.

A major search immediately gets underway. Days crawl past, agonisingly, with no sign of the girls or their teacher. The principal of the school, godmother to one of the missing students, is desperately trying to hold the parents, the school community - and herself - together. She needs to find out what happened before the police do. Finally, separated and traumatised, the four girls re-appear. But the male teacher does not.

And The Cins aren't talking.

Wing is an immersive, propulsive, headlong, heartrush of a read. Provocative, sharp, raging and tender, it is a novel about the fault lines in female friendships. Between mothers and daughters. Between older and younger generations. And of course, between men and women. It is a novel that meets its times head on, with great power, honesty and urgency. As the author of the international sensation, The Bride Stripped Bare, Nikki Gemmell defined sex, desire and identity for a generation of women. Now, two decades later, she comes full circle, with another incendiary novel about what it means to be a woman today.

'Brave, vicious and biting yet terribly tender and truthful. I read it in a single sitting, almost without breathing.' Suzie Miller, Prima Facie

About the Author:

Nikki Gemmell writes novels, memoirs, essays and columns. She is the bestselling author of some twenty books, including Shiver, The Bride Stripped Bare, After, The Ripping Tree and Dissolve. Her books have been translated into twenty-two languages.

About the Host:  Catherine Milne 

Catherine has worked in publishing for many years, including with Penguin Books, Allen & Unwin, and since 2012 with HarperCollins, where she is now Head of Fiction. Her list is eclectic, but consistently award-winning and bestselling. From literary fiction to crossover/bookclub fiction and narrative non-fiction, she looks for books that seize her and make her feel. In recent years, that’s been books like Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence, Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, Holly Ringland’s The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Stan Grant’s Talking to My Country, and Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss.

About Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore

Rated as one of the top 10 bookstores in the world by National Geographic, Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore is an oasis for writers, readers, and coffee lovers. Books overflow from the shelves of their store, featuring a mix of new, second-hand, antiquarian and rare books. Stay a while & enjoy some homemade chai, and amazing coffee, and unearth a book treasure or two. Read more about the bookstore's story here, and about the real Gertrude & Alice here.

'Nikki Gemmell is such an exquisite writer. I'm compelled to re-read, just to savour her unique style, use of uncommon adjectives, her turn of phrase and sentence structures. The story is gripping from the start. This is a story about difficult relationships ... It's about what it is to be a woman today and it's a mesmerising read.' Good Reading