Author Vesna Main is coming to East Sheen Library to discuss her latest collection of short stories, Temptation: A User’s Guide.

Each story follows solitary individuals toiling through daily lives, motivated by a passion that often spills into obsession.

Acclaimed novelist Carys Davies said: “By turns forthright and uncanny, witty and serious, Vesna Main’s stories interrogate our difficult world.

“With their cast of prostitutes, prisoners, husbands, wives, exiles, misanthropes and writers, they ask questions about intimacy and love, ageing and death, about solitude and identity and the transformative power of art.”

A prostitute turned murderer, a self-destructive book collector, a perfectionist dinner party hostess and an amateur baker incessantly producing industrial qualities of cakes – all are motivated by a desire to be loved.

Vesna Main was born in Zagreb, Croatia and studied comparative literature before obtaining a doctorate from the Shakespeare Institute in Birmingham.

She was a lecturer at universities in Nigeria and the UK and has worked for the BBC.

Her articles, reviews and short stories have appeared in newspapers and literary journals.

Her two novels are A Woman With No Clothes On (Delancey Press, 2008) and The Reader the Writer (Mirador, 2015).

Date: Thursday, May 24

Time: 7-8pm

Location: East Sheen Library

Price: £3 per person, booking essential

Tickets available here.