Margate Bookshop Event

27th August 2026

Fort Road Hotel Bar

Local author Jacqueline Crooks discusses her dynamic new novel Sky City, a fateful story of friendship and redemption set in 1990s London at Fort Road Hotel Bar in Margate

7pm - 9pm

Three lives collide by chance in Jacqueline Crooks' lyrical new novel Sky City, a thrilling nineties throwback that plays out on both sides of the Atlantic. It opens in London, as Jaycee finally gets a room of her own - a sanctuary up in the Sky City housing estate - after many precarious years in a homeless hostel. In one sense she's thriving, but the darkness of her childhood follows her like a shadow. When her first love, Sol, reappears offering her a lifeline, she wonders if she can rely on him. Following a revelatory trip to Atlantic City with her best friend Ella-G, another daughter in search of a father, Jaycee comes home to face the traumas of her past as her, Sol and Ella-G's worlds threaten to crash together... and splinter apart.

A Jamaica-born British author now based in Margate, Jacqueline Crooks published her acclaimed debut novel, Fire Rush, in 2023. Alongside her writing, Crooks works with communities to explore the power of storytelling to affect change.

She'll be discussing all-things Sky City in conversation with Iman Amrani, an award-winning journalist, writer, producer and moderator.

The wonderful Fort Road Hotel host the meet-ups in their basement bar with a delicious selection of drinks and snacks.

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