EIBF Events on Thursday 16th August

• Wake up to Words - Highland Park Spiegeltent

A triple bill of three superb novelists. Welsh writer Trezza Azzopardi was Booker shortlisted for her first novel. Winterton Blue, set by the Norfolk coast, confirms her gifts. Sue Gee writes about love of books in Reading In Bed; while Edinburgh’s own Joan Lingard also sees love through the prism of reading and libraries in After You’ve Gone.

• Meet the Author - RBS Main Theatre

The glorious intelligence, verve, wit and fiendish plotting of Kate Atkinson’s work gladden the heart in every way. Whitbread and Saltire winner, internationally fêted, she goes from strength to strength. Her most recent novel, One Good Turn, celebrates Edinburgh itself, at festival time. Come and meet a true literary star.

• East and West - Poppers Theatre

Two provocative perspectives on Iraq. In Bankrolling Basra Andrew Alderson, former director of a merchant bank, suddenly found himself in charge of running a large section of Iraq’s economy. Dramatic, personal, funny and terrifying. Investigative journalist Neil Mackay explains the real and shocking roots of the invasion in The War On Truth.

• First Fiction - Writers' Retreat

One of the most extraordinary debuts of recent years, Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts is an enthrallingly original roller-coaster ride through language, identity, memory, unspace and Jaws. Constantly surprising, this is a heady and enlivening journey into the unknown. Indecently talented Scottish journalist Jenny Turner’s The Brainstorm explores what happens when a journalist loses her memory and looks with fresh eyes on life, London and the rat-race rush to get rich.

• The RBS Event - RBS Main Theatre

There is no more popular author at the Book Festival than Ian Rankin, Scottish genius of crime and genial raconteur. The UK’s biggest selling crime author, recipient of countless awards, his events are a constant delight. In an exclusive Book Festival preview he here tantalisingly reveals something of the forthcoming final Inspector Rebus novel. Chaired by Magnus Linklater.

• Fine Fiction - ScottishPower Studio Theatre

Two novelists who combine bestselling popularity with prodigious intelligence and insight. Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With A Pearl Earring was a deservedly massive success; Burning Bright, about William Blake, shows all the same gifts. Maggie O’Farrell beautifully evokes a life lost and reclaimed in The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.

• Crime - Poppers Theatre

Two more magnificent mistresses of crime each with a rapidly growing readership. Alex Gray’s The Riverman looks at the secrets concealed by a body fished from the Clyde; Aline Templeton’s Lying Dead also deals with drowning in a typically deftly plotted narrative.

• The ScottishPower Event - RBS Main Theatre

Ann all-star line up celebrating one of the year's most groundbreaking creative projects, where leading Scottish writers wrote lyrics for leading musicians. The resultant songs are individual, beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking. What was it like for those involved? Join Ali Smith, Louise Welsh, A L Kennedy, Alan Bissett and Rodge Glass alongside Roddy Woomble of Idlewild, Emma Pollock formerly of The Delgados and other friends for a night of words and music to remember.

• Focus on Italy - ScottishPower Studio Theatre

Italy illuminated in two intensely affectionate accounts. Edinburgh’s own Mary Contini tells in Dear Olivia of that generation of her family who left their culture and home to come to Scotland. Beppe Severgnini, leading journalist, provides a field guide to the Italian mind and all the joyous contradictions of his country in La Bella Figura.