Kate Atkinson's books are something special. No other author I've read has the ability to create characters and worlds with the same style and freedom. And Shrines of Gaiety is up there with her best, pulling us along into something beautiful, dark, and still somehow incredibly real.
Setting us down in the glamourous world of 1920s Soho, Atkinson conjures up a London swirling with the lights and decadence of a country determined to ignore the trauma of the war. Nellie Coker is the ruthless and ambitious club owner, determined to defend her empire not only from London's only honest detective but also from his corrupt colleagues and figures from her own past come back to haunt her at last.
'Atkinson on her finest form. A marvel of plate-spinning narrative knowhow, a peak performance of consummate control.' OBSERVER
'This is the perfect novel for uncertain times.' THE TIMES
'I can think of few writers other than Dickens who can match it' SUNDAY TIMES
'Brilliant' RICHARD OSMAN
'Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today, anywhere in the world' GILLIAN FLYNN
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1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries…
Jenna Adams' debut novel perfectly captures that youthful feeling of being desperate for love but, deep down, not yet ready for it. But what makes it such a powerful story is how she portrays the difficult balance between intent and responsibility and how the lack of the first does not diminish the impact of the second.
At fourteen, Brooke is desperate for a boy, any boy, to want to be with her. When she and Matt grow close during rehearsals for her local drama group, the fact that he is four years older than her doesn't stop them from beginning a relationship neither of them is ready for. One that will have damaging and long-lasting consequences Brooke is not equipped to face.
Fourteen-year-old Brooke Tyler has spent her whole life waiting for a boy to choose her. Matt is about to go to university, scared to leave behind everything he knows. When both are cast as romantic leads in Romeo and Juliet, they fulfil the roles of forbidden lovers both on and off the stage. Brooke is sure that her fairy tale is coming true - and best of all, Matt is older.
Brooke considers secrets and lies a small price to pay for her first boyfriend, but the relationship is set to cost her after one night alone in an empty…
I love a good chilling tale where the reader can never be certain the supernatural is real or just an interpretation of the protagonist's state of mind. And this is exactly what Toon gives us with this tale of hidden secrets and unhealed trauma set in the isolated forests of the Scottish Highlands.
Lauren is too young to remember a mother who disappeared over a decade ago. Her father drinks to forget, and her neighbours know more than they let on. But then two things happen. Lauren and her father pick up a strange woman from the side of the road who disappears the following morning, and a local teenage girl goes missing, and Lauren finds herself in the middle of a village forced to remember the past.
WINNER of the McIlvanney Prize 2020 Shortlisted for Bloody Scotland's Scottish Crime Debut of the Year 2020 Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2020
'Hugely atmospheric, exquisitely written and utterly gripping' LUCY FOLEY, author of The Hunting Party 'It's both eerie and thrilling at once, and had me under its spell until the end' SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, author of Blue Ticket and The Water Cure ______________
They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.
Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands,…
A Far Better Thing is a supernatural thriller exploring the idea that no matter how certain we are about our beliefs, everything can be swept away by a single action.
Elizabeth is part of the Circle, a group that believes they must find and sacrifice innocent souls for a ritual that keeps the Devil bound in Hell. No matter how horrific their actions, the alternative means the death of everything. But when one of their number turns against them, Elizabeth must confront the possibility that everything the Circle believes is a lie. And if that is the case, how can she possibly face the terrible things she has done in the name of something she no longer believes in?
