CHARLOTTE Mendelson, whose fourth novel Almost English has been long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, will be in Ross-on-Wye on Wednesday to talk about the book.

Almost English tells the story of 16-year-old Marina who lives in a tiny flat in west London with her emotionally delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives.

Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce un-English pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, Marina knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.

At Combe Abbey, a traditional English public school for which her family have sacrificed everything, Marina realises she has made a terrible mistake.

She is the awkward half-foreign girl who doesn’t know how to fit in, flirt or even be. In the meantime, her mother Laura, an alien in this strange universe, has her own painful secrets to deal with, especially the return of the last man she’d expect back in her life.

Charlotte’s second novel, For Daughters of Jerusalem, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and her third, When We Were Bad, was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008 and she was chosen as one of Waterstone’s 25 authors of the future.

Tickets, £3, are available from both branches of Rossiter Books in Ross (on 01989 564464) and Monmouth (01600 775572) or at rossiterbooks.co.uk.