SHE’S an internationally renowned author and next week she will be in Huddersfield launching her new book.

Jodie Picoult is the latest of a series of authors to speak in the town and her visit on Wednesday, that’s April 3, is a joint event hosted by Kirklees libraries and Huddersfield Literature Festival.

Jodie with be “In Conversation” at Huddersfield Town Hall at 7.30pm to launch her new book, The Storyteller.

This best-selling American writer is the author of novels including Lone Wolf and Sing You Home, plus My Sister’s Keeper, which was made into a film starring Cameron Diaz.

She says that this new book is very different.

“Boy, am I looking forward to hearing readers’ reactions to this book,” she said.

“It’s different. Gruelling”.

The book tells how Sage Singer befriends an old man who’s particularly beloved in her community.

Josef Weber is everyone's favourite retired teacher and Little League coach.

One day he asks Sage for a favour: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses – and then Josef confesses his darkest secret – that he deserves to die because he had been a Nazi SS guard. And Sage’s grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.

How do you react to evil living next door? Can someone who has committed truly heinous acts ever atone with subsequent good behaviour? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren’t the party who was wronged? And, if Sage even considers the request, is it revenge – justice?

Jodie said: “There’s no trial. A third of it takes place over 70 years ago.

“There’s a Gothic fairytale embedded in it. “It’s just not your usual Jodi Picoult novel. So what made me write it?”

Go and listen to her at the Town Hall next week and you might just find out.

Jodie is an award-winning writer and her books have been translated into 34 languages in 35 countries.

Tickets for the event are available online at kirklees.gov.uk/townhalls or by contacting 01484 223200.