A Gateshead author is hoping her third book set in Seahouses will inspire more people to visit the village on the Northumberland Coast.
Salt Girl, by Katherine Graham, is the latest instalment in the "Seahouses Mysteries" crime thriller series.
Originally from Ryton, author Katherine says she spent every weekend in Seahouses during her childhood and wanted to celebrate the natural beauty of the village. She told ChronicleLive: "When I was growing up, our family had a holiday cottage up there and it's just a place that's very, very close to my heart.
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"I always tell people to go and visit and I want to celebrate the natural beauty of Seahouses. But there's something about a murder mystery where you want to feel a little bit claustrophobic, I think there's quite a nice contrast between a place that's really beautiful where something really bad can happen."
The second book in the series, Salted Earth, was nominated for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction in 2022. And Katherine counts Northumberland author LJ Ross, who established the competition, as one of her inspirations.
She continued: "I read about two books a week from quite a wide variety of authors. I like Lucy Foley, Gillian McAllister, Adele Parks, and I really like what Lianne Moriarty does because the subject matter is quite dark but she can have a bit of a laugh with it, and I like that lightness to come through.
"I don't think I discovered LJ Ross until I was writing my first book in 2021, then I devoured all 20 within the space of a few months."
As well as being nominated for the Lindisfarne Prize, Katherine says her books have gone down well with a local audience. She said: "People have really taken it to their hearts.
"I think in general people from our part of the world are quite supportive of one another. When you put a story into words and put it out there, you're putting part of yourself our there and it's a very personal thing.
"It's been great, especially because so many people know Seahouses because thy go there on holiday. I love reading books that are set in places that I've been to, if I'm going somewhere I'll look for a book that's set there to get a feel for the place, and with the first Seahouses mystery, I wrote it during Covid so it was great to get a sense of the place without actually being there."
Katherine has found an audience across the pond too, with more than 60% of her e-readers based in the United States. She finished: "It might be a bit far for them to go, but generally I just want people to read it, enjoy it and hopefully go and visit Seahouses!"
Salt Girl sees protagonist Izzy return to Seahouses with fiancé Jake to move into their dream home. However, when they find a body under their conservatory, local police seem incapable or unwilling to investigate, so Izzy enlists the help of her former English teacher to solve the mystery.
Salt Girl is on sale at the Accidental Bookshop in Alnwick and Waterstones stores in Morpeth, Newcastle and the MetroCentre. It is also available as an eBook on Amazon's Kindle Store.
An audiobook is set to follow, narrated by Morpeth actor and voice artist Helen McFarlane, with Katherine saying that it took a while to find someone with the perfect accent!
What is your favourite book set in the North East? Let us know!
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