Debut Authors: Helen Bain & Sara Bayat

Daffodil Days is Helen Bain's fictional account of Syliva Plath's life in North Tawton, Devon, from July 1961 to February 1963.

Refracted through the voices of the townspeople who encounter Plath, Bain builds a layered portrait of the poet - contradictory, unstable, unexpected - raising questions about the fluctuating nature of identity and the complexities surrounding fact and truth in biography.This "deeply researched and utterly convincing" debut, "its prose supple and intelligent" (The Guardian) brings to life not only Plath and Ted Hughes's disintegrating marriage but also the world around them.In Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting, Sara Bayat similarly summons a rural community through the voices of eight characters, each contending with a personal loss.

Beneath the facade of an unremarkable place and unremarkable lives lies a dark history - centuries-old tales of witch trials and death - which breaks through the surface calm as a local wood is earmarked for development.Merging evocative descriptions of the countryside with psychological realism and English folk-tale traditions, Bayat's "moving and accomplished debut" (Samuel Fisher) examines how we are shaped by our ecology and haunted by loss and love.Helen Bain and Sara Bayat will be in conversation with Dr Nicola Presley.