We are delighted to welcome the award winning crime writing legend Val McDermid back to the North East to celebrate the latest in her Karen Pirie series - Silent Bones. When torrential rain causes a landslide on a motorway in Scotland, it reveals a crime scene: someone hid a body in the tarmac eleven years before. Journalist Sam Nimmo had been the prime suspect in the murder of his fiance when he disappeared, and now DCI Karen Pirie and her Historic Cases Unit must find out who buried him, and why. Meanwhile in Edinburgh, new evidence reopens a closed case and the accidental death of a hotel manager starts to look like murder. But what did Tom Jamieson's book club have to do with his demise - and what will they do to keep their secrets? Karen and her team begin to untangle a web of lies, one which connects their murder cases with Scotland's rich and powerful. They will be tested to their limits - and possibly beyond . . Val will be in conversation with fellow crime writer and North East resident Trevor Wood.