Book lovers from across the UK will converge on Edinburgh this weekend to buy and sell books in a weeklong fundraiser for life-saving Christian Aid projects.

The annual Christian Aid Book Sale has evolved over the years to become something of a book-lover's paradise and an Edinburgh institution, yet it has a serious underlying purpose - to raise money for the humanitarian agency Christian Aid.

Each of the last five sales has raised over £100,000 for the work of the charity and the 'great May Sale' is now well established as a magnet for book-lovers, writers and artists, literary folk, antiquarians, and people from all over the UK and beyond.

The ambitious week-long fundraiser is supported this year by two leading Scots writers who will be present at the launch, Alan Grant, creator of Judge Dredd, and James Robertson, author of the recent best-selling novel The Last Testament of Gideon Mack. He is also writer-in-residence at the Scottish Parliament and co-translator of Kidnappit, the version in Scots of Alan Grant's text and the first-ever Scots graphic novel.

Grant, whose latest work is a new graphic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, said: "The Christian Aid Book Sale has evolved into what is without doubt one of the most important events in the entire Scottish, and indeed UK, literary calendar."

Robertson said: "R L Stevenson wrote that, 'Books are good enough in their own way but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.' The Christian Aid Book Sale shows how books can save lives, and I'm delighted to be associated with such a worthwhile event that seems to me to bring out the very best of our Scottish values."

Highlights of this year's sale include a rare first edition in book format of W M Thackeray's masterpiece Vanity Fair (1848), the historical novel gave the world one of its most famous fictional heroines in the redoubtable Becky Sharp.

The sale will open on Saturday 12 May before the weeklong fundraiser from Monday 14 to Friday 18 May at St Andrew's and St George's Church on George Street.

The sale is a paradise for lovers of books of every kind but other collectors will also find treats in the additional sale of sporting memorabilia, programmes, albums, cigarette cards, maps, antiques, paintings, drawing, prints, records, CDs, DVDs and videos, stamps, postcards, toys and games.