Ruth Jones: By Your Side

A Linghams Bookshop and Booka Bookshop (BLing Events) event working with Chester Literature Festival at Storyhouse:

We’re thrilled to announce an event with much loved actress, screenwriter and bestselling author, Ruth Jones, for her new novel, ‘By Your Side’.  

Linda and Levi will never meet.
But they’re going to change each other’s lives. In her role at the council’s Unclaimed Heirs Unit, Linda Standish investigates the lives of those who’ve died alone and tracks down any living relatives. She’s been a friend to the friendless for the past thirty-three years.
And now she’s looking forward to an early retirement. But before she hangs up her lanyard, Linda must take on one last case – that of Levi Norman Jones – a Welshman who’d made his home on a remote Scottish island for the past five years. What brought Levi here? And who did he leave behind? Obliged to travel (by hearse) with her arch nemesis Fergus Murray, and helped (and hindered) by the eccentric local residents, Linda searches for clues to a life now lost.

And in the process unexpectedly makes new friends, and discovers things about herself she never knew. Bursting with all the heart and humour that has made Ruth’s name as a screenwriter and author, By Your Side is about finding joy in the most unlikely connections, and the importance of holding onto friendship, love and community – especially when life gets messy. 

Ruth Jones MBE is best known for her outstanding and award-winning television writing – BBC 1’s Gavin and Stacey, in which she played the incorrigible Nessa Jenkins, and Sky 1’s Stella. She has numerous other television credits to her name. Now, the author of ‘Never Greener’, ‘Us Three’, ‘Love Untold’, her new novel, ‘By Your Side’  brings us a  joyful and life-affirming story with characters you’ll come to know and love, shining a compassionate light on human nature and why we make the mistakes we do.