Author Alis Hawkins will appear at Waterstones in Aberystwyth on Friday, 31 March to discuss her new book, A Bitter Remedy.

Alis is a founder member of the Welsh crime writers’ collective, Crime Cymru, and chair of Wales’ only crime fiction festival, Gŵyl Crime Cymru.

She writes Victorian crime fiction, and two of her previous books having been shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Award.

A Bitter Remedy is set in Oxford in 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings with the medical examination revealing some shocking findings. He’s been poisoned.

When the young man’s guardian blames the college, Basil Rice, a college fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to act. The mystery soon attracts the attention of young Welsh polymath, ‘Non’ Vaughan, one of the few women newly admitted to lectures. Both misfits, they form an unlikely partnership and it soon falls to them to investigate the death. Turns out the dreaming spires of Oxford are not all they seem.

The action also takes place in west Wales, and you can find out more at Waterstones at 7pm on Friday, 31 March, when Aberystwyth University professor Matt Jarvis will be in conversation with Alis.