Archives de catégorie : London 2024 Fiction

GIRL ON WARD A de Christie Newport

Gripping historical thriller – perfect for all fans of Kate Morton and Hannah Kent.

GIRL ON WARD A
by Christie Newport
Storm Publishing, June 2024
(via Northbank Talent Management)

In 1995, journalist Olive Brown receives a threatening letter hinting at her connection to a dark past in an asylum in 1952. With a controlling and abusive husband and two young daughters to protect, Olive decides to investigate the matter herself to avoid jeopardizing her career.

Meanwhile, in 1952, Martha Littler is a pregnant teenager hiding her condition from her abusive parents. After giving birth, Martha’s baby is taken away by her parents, and she is admitted to Wynwarden Asylum, where she befriends fellow patient Lizzie. They discover the horrifying truth about the abusive treatments and atrocities happening within the asylum. As bodies begin to appear, Martha tries to seek the truth – whilst being torn between saving her sister and finding her baby.

The lives of Olive and Martha are linked in ways they could never imagine. As they begin to uncover the hidden pasts of those closest to them, there are deadly consequences.

Christie Newport is a mixed-heritage writer living in Northumberland. Since developing a rare illness as a child, Christie found reading and creating stories to be an escape. In recent years Christie has taken her writing seriously, honing her skills through courses and various brilliant opportunities. Writing crime and psychological thrillers set in her home city is her passion.

THE HOUSE IN THE WATER de Victoria Darke

May Day House sits, imposing and crumbling, on its own island in the Thames.

THE HOUSE IN THE WATER
by Victoria Darke
Boldwood Books, Summer 2024
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Only accessible by boat, the house has been sitting empty for two decades. It wasn’t always empty, of course. It’s a house that’s brimming with history. During WW2, it hosted hundreds of recuperating wounded soldiers. And now, there are the ghosts – staring out at those who sail past its windows.

In the autumn of 2013, and Philip and Meredith Holland are the proud new owners of May Day House. Following a string of tragedies, the couple have moved to the area in search of a new start. But all is not what it seems in this friendly, close-knit neighbourhood. Will shadows from the past darken their new-found happiness?

Victoria Darke is the pen name for Faber Academy graduate Victoria Scott. She has a degree in English from King’s College, London and a Postgraduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from City University, London. She lives near London with her husband and two children, and works as a freelance journalist, media trainer and journalism tutor.

THE TINY THINGS ARE HEAVIER d’Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo

A stunning debut exploring the hardships of migration, the subtleties of Nigeria’s class system, and how far we’ll go to protect those we love.

THE TINY THINGS ARE HEAVIER
by Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo
Bloomsbury, June 2025
(via Writers House)

THE TINY THINGS ARE HEAVIER follows Sommy, a Nigerian woman who comes to the United States for graduate school two weeks after her brother, Mezie, attempts suicide. Plagued by the guilt of leaving Mezie behind, Sommy struggles to fit into her new life as a student and an immigrant. She soon enters a complicated relationship with her boisterous Nigerian roommate, Bayo, a relationship that plummets into a web of lies and deceit when Sommy meets Bryan, a biracial American, whose estranged Nigerian father left the States immediately after his birth. Bonded by their feelings of unbelonging and a vague sense of kinship, Sommy and Bryan transcend the challenges of their new relationship.

After a year together, Sommy and Bryan visit Lagos, Nigeria for the summer break, where Sommy reunites with Mezie and Bryan gets a lead on his father. But when Mezie accidentally commits manslaughter in a drunken fit of fear, Sommy and Bryan react to the crime in vastly different ways, exposing the cracks in their relationship and forcing Sommy to confront her notions of self and familial love.

A deeply moving and gorgeously written novel about family, grief, privilege, and coming-of-age within cultural rupture, THE TINY THINGS ARE HEAVIER will appeal to readers of Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom, and Jessica George’s Maame.

Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a second-year PhD student in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Her fiction has appeared in Isele Magazine, Guernica, and Catapult. She’s a recipient of the 2021 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant.

WHAT YOU MAKE OF ME de S.M. Dess

Intense, darkly humorous, and emotionally acute, WHAT YOU MAKE OF ME poses questions about love and obsession, about meaning and the purpose of art. What does it mean to use someone else’s life for your art? Where is the line? Does it matter?

WHAT YOU MAKE OF ME
by S.M. Dess
Penguin Press, March 2025
(via Writers House)

Demetri and his sister, Ava. Ava and her brother, Demetri. As fiercely competitive as they are co-dependent, the two have long been locked in an emotionally charged relationship. Ava, defiant and impassioned, grew up in the shadow of soft, charming, and intellectual Demetri. But in the aftershocks of familial trauma, it is Demetri who finds himself emotionally ruined, whereas Ava has no time nor patience for grief. As they grow up, following one another from city to city, the siblings are set on their own parallel paths as artists, thinkers, and lovers. Ava throws herself into her obsession with her art, which gradually leads to fame and financial stability – as well as extreme existential insecurity. But Demetri flounders, unable to escape the wake of tragedy.

When Nati, an Italian gallery owner, arrives in New York, Demetri and Ava orbit her, possessed by their own priorities. But when they both fall for her, Nati refuses to play their game. Once again, and perhaps for the last time, the brother and sister must face what they most want from each other, and what they’re unwilling to give.

S.M. Dess is a writer with fiction in The Paris Review, The Drift, Forever Magazine and more. She received her MFA from Columbia University in Spring 2023.

MONA ACTS OUT de Mischa Berlinski

Both beguilingly approachable and intricately constructed, at once funny and sad and wise, MONA ACTS OUT is a novel about acting and telling the truth; about how we play roles to get through our days; and how the great roles teach us how to live.

MONA ACTS OUT
by Mischa Berlinski
Norton Liveright, Winter 2025
(via Writers House)

Celebrated stage actress Mona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning to the clamor of a household of guests packed into her Manhattan apartment and to a wave of dread: her in-laws are lurking on the other side of the bedroom door; she’s still fighting with her husband, who has not forgotten what happened last night; and in just a few weeks she is supposed to step into the rehearsal room as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. It’s the hardest role in theatre—and the first role Mona has ever attempted without her sister, who died just over a year ago, by her side. When her father-in-law starts fighting with her niece about Donald Trump, Mona bounds out the door with the family dog in tow (“I forgot the parsley!”) to find the only person she doesn’t have to act for: her estranged longtime mentor, Milton Katz, who may or may not be dying and who was recently forced out of the legendary theatre company he founded amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Mona’s trek turns into an overnight adventure that brings her face to face with her past, with her creative power and its limitations, and ultimately, with all the people she has loved and still loves.

A brilliant, highly-anticipated return of a writer of almost magical descriptive and imaginative powers.

Mischa Berlinski is the author of Fieldwork, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Peacekeeping. He has written for the New York Review of Books about Haitian politics, has tried to buy a zombie for Men’s Journal, and investigated a woman who married a snake for Harper’s Magazine. His writing has appeared in the Best American Essays and the Best American Travel Writing. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Addison M. Metcalf Award.