The Tarot Reader of Versailles: A Tarot Reading & Book Talk with Anya Bergman

Join us for a book event with a difference - Tarot readings and book talk from author Anya Bergman! Anya will introduce her beautiful new book The Tarot Reader of Versailles, in a conversation with Alice Tarbuck, and there will be an opportunity for Q&A and a book signing. Then, Anya will give private one card Tarot readings for a lucky 10-12 attendees, and other guests can browse the mini witchcraft market with Alice. At the end of the event, Anya will draw a name out of a hat, and that person will win a free full Tarot reading online.

Anya has been reading Tarot Cards professionally for over thirty years, and she also used the Tarot to write this novel!

Inspired by the astonishing true story of Marie-Anne Adelaide Lenormand, The Tarot Reader of Versailles is a sweeping, powerful novel where allegiances, betrayals and even fate itself can be forged or broken by the turn of a card .

About the book:

Two women. An extraordinary power. An explosive bond. In a time of revolution, their fates will lie in the turn of a card...

It is the early days of the French Revolution and, on the streets of Paris, terror reigns. Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand is a young woman with an extraordinary power - through her tarot cards, she can commune with the dead, revolutionaries and the aristocracy alike seeking her out to divine their fortunes. Lenormand is loyal to Marie Antoinette and the dauphin of France, but she has seen the queen's fate in the cards and must take care that it doesn't become her own. Then, one fateful day, she comes across Cait, a scullery maid from Ireland who has travelled to Paris for love. Cait has powers too - she can read people's pasts as Lenormand reads their futures. The two young women share an electrifying connection, drawn to each other's abilities. But Cait is hiding something. What will she do - and who will she betray - to bring revolution to the shores of her beloved Ireland too?

'Utterly captivating. An engrossing, propulsive novel' Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites

'A gorgeously written, at times fantastical and deeply immersive novel' Molly Aitken, author of Bright I Burn

About the speakers: (author photo credit Lizzie McGhee)

Anya Bergman is the author of the bestselling The Witches of Vardø, a Sunday Times best historical fiction book of 2023, and shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2023. Anya also writes under her real name Noelle Harrison and has had 12 novels published, and been translated into over 13 different languages worldwide. She is a Creative Writing Lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University where she has just completed a PhD on her witch literature. Anya has been reading Tarot Cards professionally for over thirty years and her new novel The Tarot Reader of Versailles was published in May 2025. Anya splits her time between Edinburgh and County Kerry.

Event chair: Dr Alice Tarbuck is an award-winning poet and writer. Her debut non-fiction book A Spell in the Wild: a year (and six centuries) of Magic is published by Hodder & Stoughton. With Claire Askew, she is the co-editor of The Modern Craft, published by Watkins. She is a previous winner of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award for poetry, and recipient of their award for programming. She has taught Creative Writing at the Universities of Dundee and York, and is a Lead Reader for Open Book. Alice is currently Writer in Residence on the AHRC funded Print Matters project at the University of York. She splits her time between Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders.