Olga Wojtas Launches Miss Blaines Prefect and the Parcel of Rogues - Aboyne-Dinnet Church

Olga Wojtas is an unconventional and witty writer of postmodern crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has published more than 40 short stories in literary journals and anthologies.

Her debut novel, Miss Blaines Prefect and the Golden Samovar, was published in the United Kingdom and United States to great critical acclaim and was longlisted for the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize 2019, shortlisted for a CrimeFest Award, and named as one of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year by Kirkus. Miss Blaines Prefect series now also includes the Vampire Menace, the Weird Sisters, the Gondola of Doom, the Uncharted Island and now the Parcel of Rogues.

In her latest book, 50-something librarian Shona McMonagle is a proud former pupil of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls with a deep loathing for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which she thinks gives her alma mater a bad name. Its 1788, and Shona has travelled back in time and turned up in the Assembly Rooms. Edinburgh society is lionising Burns on his second visit to the capital. Hed rather be in Ayrshire with Jean, but his publisher has made him go on tour and his publicist has told him to adopt the persona of A Lad to boost interest. His publicist is in fact Nancy McLehose, Clarinda; she has framed Mistress Blaine for murdering a coachman and condemned her to the Tollbooth. Shona enlists the help of a teenage Walter Scott, but the plot continues to thicken. What will happen to the Enlightenment and to these resourceful women?

At this event, Yeadons of Banchory will be selling books which Olga will be signing.