The fifth annual Cove and Kilcreggan Book Festival attracted record crowds – and was voted a great success by the many hundreds who came through the door.

Run entirely by volunteers from the Rosneath peninsula, the book festival has built audiences year on year, and also managed to attract some major literary stars from the Scottish literary firmament.

This year’s line up included the Scottish Makar Jackie Kay and crime writing royalty in the person of Val McDermid.

Fellow crime writer Alex Gray also had her own event, as did popular BBC broadcaster Sally Magnusson, who talked about her first novel, The Sealwoman’s Gift.

The festival opened on Saturday with Angus Roxburgh, who worked for both the Sunday Times and BBC as their man in Moscow.

And on Sunday another distinguished foreign correspondent, Allan Little, brought a packed house to tears with his moving talk – a hundred years from the end of the First World War – on what lures young men, and young journalists, to war zones.

The novelist James Robertson did double duty, interviewing the award-winning essayist playwright and novelist Andrew O’Hagan then introducing his wonderful quirky biography of Michael Marra on Saturday evening.

He was joined then by the legendary singer songwriter Rab Noakes, who helped bring Marra’s songs to life.

The final event of the weekend had special local resonance for locals as Jane MacKenzie talked about her Second World War novel set in both Alexandria and the peninsula, which had housed both a French naval hospital and an American base.

All the events took place in the community owned and run Cove Burgh Hall, which will use the proceeds to undertake some essential, expensive repair work.

More than 40 volunteers were involved over the weekend, running a café bar, a ticket desk, a green room for authors, and a book sales and signing area in the community library.

(All pictures with this story were taken by Louise Walker and are reproduced with permission.)