Our very own Jane Harper’s stunning debut novel, The Dry, is continuing to make a splash – even internationally! It has been longlisted for UK’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. “The prize was created to celebrate the very best in crime fiction and is open to UK and Irish crime authors” according to their website. As Jane is British-born, she is an eligible candidate!
Other Pan Macmillan and Picador authors who have made the longlist are Ann Cleeves for her book The Seagull and Emma Flint for Little Deaths.
Executive director of T&R Theakston, Simon Theakston, said: “2018’s longlist shows how strong and dynamic the genre is as it features so many debut novels, alongside established names. It shows how crime fiction not only dominates publishing but shapes our cultural landscape.”
Best of luck to all of our wonderful authors!
About THE DRY:
WHO REALLY KILLED THE HADLER FAMILY?
It hasn’t rained in Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the farming community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are discovered shot to death on their property. Everyone assumes Luke Hadler committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son.
Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns to his hometown for the funerals and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and his childhood friend Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke’s death threatens to unearth.
Get your copy of The Dry here.
About THE SEAGULL:
The Seagull is Ann Cleeves’ searing eighth novel in the bestselling Vera Stanhope series. The book is about corruption deep in the heart of a community, and about fragile, and fracturing, family relationships.
A visit to her local prison brings DI Vera Stanhope face to face with an old enemy: former detective superintendent, and now inmate, John Brace. Brace was convicted of corruption and involvement in the death of a gamekeeper – and Vera played a part in his downfall.
Brace promises Vera information about the disappearance of Robbie Marshall, a notorious wheeler-dealer, if she will look out for his daughter and grandchildren. He tells her that Marshall is dead, his body buried close to St Mary’s Island in Whitley Bay. However, when a search team investigates, officers find not one skeleton, but two.
This cold case takes Vera back in time, and very close to home, as Brace and Marshall, along with a mysterious stranger known only as ‘the Prof’, were close friends of Hector, her father. Together, they were ‘the Gang of Four’, and Hector had been one of the last people to see Marshall alive. Vera must confront her prejudices and unwanted memories to dig out the truth, as the past begins to collide dangerously with the present . . .
Get your copy of The Seagull here.
About LITTLE DEATHS:
It’s the summer of 1965, and the streets of Queens, New York shimmer in a heatwave. One July morning, Ruth Malone wakes to find a bedroom window wide open and her two young children missing. After a desperate search, the police make a horrifying discovery.
Noting Ruth’s perfectly made-up face and provocative clothing, the empty liquor bottles and love letters that litter her apartment, the detectives leap to convenient conclusions, fuelled by neighbourhood gossip and speculation. Tabloid reporter, Pete Wonicke is sent to cover the case on his first major assignment. At first, he can’t help but do the same. But the longer he spends watching Ruth, the more he learns about the darker workings of the police and the press. Soon, Pete begins to doubt everything he thought he knew.
Ruth Malone is enthralling, challenging and secretive – is she really capable of murder?
Haunting, intoxicating and heart-poundingly suspenseful. Little Deaths is a gripping novel about love, morality and obsession, exploring the capacity for good and evil within us all.
Get your copy of Little Deaths here.
