SUNDAY Times bestselling novelist, classicist and Radio 4 broadcaster Natalie Haynes is set to lift the lid on her new novel with a talk at Monmouth’s Blake Theatre.

Natalie, who has written and presented 11 series of her BBC Radio 4 show Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics is launching new book No Friend to This House, which takes the reader back to Ancient Greece and an epic quest, in September.

She has been described a once-in-a-generation storyteller, and biographer and historian Dr Amanda Foreman says No Friend to This House is her masterpiece,.

The novel follows Jason and his Argonauts as they set sail to find the Golden Fleece.

The journey is filled with danger, for him and everyone he meets, but if he ever reaches the distant land he seeks, he faces almost certain death.

Medea – priestess, witch and daughter of a brutal king – has the power to save the life of a stranger.

Will she betray her family and her home, and what will she demand in return?

Medea and Jason seize their one chance of a life together as the gods intend, but their love is steeped in vengeance from the beginning and no one, not even those closest to them, will be safe.

Natalie’s acclaimed books include The Amber Fury, shortlisted for the Mcllvanney Prize; The Children of Jocasta, a feminist retelling of the Oedipus and Antigone stories; A Thousand Ships, a retelling of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective; and Stone Blind, a re-telling of the Medusa story.

People have praised Natalie’s novels:

‘Witty, gripping, ruthless,” says Margaret Atwood on Stone Blind;

‘Haynes is a master of her trade,” adds The Daily Telegraph;

‘Fiercely feminist... A many-layered delight,” says The Guardian;

Natalie Haynes is at the Blake Theatre on Thursday, September 18, and tickets are available at www.theblaketheatre.org