This month World Book Club are guests of the American Embassy in London and Harriett Gilbert and a studio audience will be talking to US superstar thriller writer John Grisham. They will be discussing his gripping debut novel A Time To Kill, written almost 30 years ago while Grisham was still a jobbing attorney in Mississippi.

In the novel a black father takes the law into his own hands after worrying that the legal system will fail to adequately punish the two white men who brutally raped and beat his daughter. In a fascinating discussion about racism in the deep south of America hear how John Grisham has wrestled with his own feelings of prejudice, his changing views on the death penalty and how he's stumped for words when told he's beautiful!

(Image: John Grisham. Credit: Bob Krasner)