Archives de catégorie : Fiction

IN HER DEFENSE de Philippa Malicka

Ottessa Moshfegh meets The Talented Mister Ripley in this literary debut about a fractured wealthy family told through the eyes of their hired help.

IN HER DEFENSE
by Philippa Malicka
Hodder, July 2024
(via Mushens Entertainment)

IN HER DEFENSE follows the libel trial of TV personality, household name and ceramics entrepreneur, Anna Finbow, whose daughter Mary has cut off all contact with the family. After Anna accuses her daughter’s therapist of being behind the split in her newspaper column, the publicity is overwhelming, and a legal summons swiftly follows.
Mary is adamant that her childhood was abusive, whereas Anna believes the therapist is a charlatan preying on her daughter’s trust fund. Watching it all is young sculptor Augusta (Gus), Anna’s dogwalker – who has her own reasons for inveigling her way into Anna’s life…

Philippa Malicka was born in Essex and works in publishing. She is an alumnus of the Prose Fiction MA at the University of East Anglia. Her non-fiction has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph and Grazia. IN HER DEFENSE is her first novel and was longlisted for the Bridport First Novel Award.

IN THE LOBBY OF THE DREAM HOTEL de Genevieve Plunkett

“A truly brilliant novel. This is a story about madness and music, forbidden love, entrapment and escape—all written in Plunkett’s electric and propulsive prose. It’s the most compelling novel I’ve read all year; I couldn’t put it down. Stunning. »—Anna Hogeland, author of The Long Answer

IN THE LOBBY OF THE DREAM HOTEL
by Genevieve Plunkett
‎ Catapult, August 2023
(via Defiore &Co.)

Portia, a young mother and amateur musician, lives a life ruled by doctors. Having been committed to a psychiatric hospital in her twenties, she must remain cautious about her mental health, especially when a strange series of delusions begin to resurface a decade later. To make matters more complicated, Portia discovers one day that she is in love with her band’s drummer, Theo. Portia and Theo find out that they have a somewhat incredible—almost magical—connection, that not even they can understand. Portia, feeling guilty, confesses this psychic love affair to her husband Nathan who is a powerful figure, a prosecutor, in their Vermont town.
Charismatic and manipulative, he initiates an intervention with Portia’s parents, convincing them that their daughter’s decision to leave him and her claims of emotional abuse are symptoms of her mental illness. Portia is hospitalized for a second time in her life. There, Portia must face the delusions of her past. She must also decide whether she can trust her own intuition and accept the beauty and strangeness of her life, without being influenced by her past, her family’s pressure, or her diagnosis.

Genevieve Plunkett is the recipient of an O. Henry Award and the author of the story collection Prepare Her. Her work has also appeared in The Best Small Fictions, and journals such as New England Review, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, The Colorado Review, Willow Springs, Literary Hub, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and Refinery29. She lives in Vermont with her two children.

CHILDREN OF TOMORROW de J.R. Burgmann

An imaginative tour de force and an unforgettable family saga by a new voice in climate fiction.

CHILDREN OF TOMORROW
by J.R. Burgmann
‎ Upswell Publishing/Black Inc. Australia, March 2023

CHILDREN OF TOMORROW is an episodic saga, a sweeping history of family and friendship, spanning multiple generations and geographies across the twenty-first century. This web of characters struggle, both individually and collectively, through a time of unprecedented, escalating change.
Beginning in 2016, Arne Bakke witnesses the historic devastation of that summer’s bushfires across the ancient wilderness of Tasmania. Elsewhere, Londoner Evie Weatherall witnesses extreme climate events in her travels. They each see a dangerous future forming. When their paths collide in Melbourne, Australia, where they are both enrolled in a PhD, they and their group of close friends are set on course to witness and struggle together against the coming century, an age of great individual and planetary loss.
CHILDREN OF TOMORROW depicts an all-too-real future history, rushing on at an unstoppable speed and fracturing the lives of its many characters, the effects of which ripple throughout subsequent generations and the earth they inherit.

J.R. Burgmann is a writer and critic. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and received his PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies from Monash University, where he is based at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub. CHILDREN OF TOMORROW, his debut novel, was highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2021 in the category of unpublished manuscripts. In 2022 he was awarded a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship.

THE IDLE STANCE OF THE TIPPLER PIGEON de Safinah Danish Elahi

A beautifully rendered portrait of love, healing, and long-buried pain, digging deep into the nature of trauma and class division. Perfect for readers of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak.

THE IDLE STANCE OF THE TIPPLER PIGEON
by Safinah Danish Elahi
Neem Tree Press, May 2023
(via Randle Editorial & Literary)

Zohaib, Misha and Nadia believed they would be in each other’s lives forever. As children they played, argued, teased and loved one another. Yet nothing could have prepared them for the tragic turn of events one fateful afternoon in Karachi, Pakistan, when the divisions and differences between them are revealed.
Years later and they are still trying to piece their lives back together, still trying to make sense of what happened. Zohaib is living in London, haunted by the ghosts of the past. Nadia has escaped the household where she first met Misha and Zohaib but finds fate delivering her back to their door…

Safinah Danish Elahi is a lawyer, writer and poet. She is the author of two books, The Unbridled Romance of Love and Pain and Eye on the Prize, a novel which is being adapted for tv. Safinah is also the founder of Reverie Publishers, an independent press based in Pakistan. Recently, she was selected for the Iowa Writing Program Fall Residency 2022.

GODDESSES de Nina Millns

Get Out meets In a Dark, Dark Wood – a reading group thriller about Ayesha, a mixed-race stand-up comedian who finds herself entangled with a group of powerful feminist activists, and what happens when someone dares to challenge the status quo…

GODDESSES
by Nina Millns
Simon & Schuster, Summer 2023
(via Northbank Talent Management)

2017. West Londoner and comic Ayesha is just about finding her feet on the stand-up scene – but it’s hard when stuffy venues only let one minority act on the bill. Then, after her vocal reaction to a sexist heckler goes viral, she suddenly finds herself in the spotlight and welcomed into a group of seasoned activists, all committed to the fight against sexism and the patriarchy. Ayesha is funny, can write the scripts, get people to listen, but she doesn’t have the connections of these powerful women – especially veteran activist Frankie and performance artist India Baxter-Wright – and she’s in awe of them.
Then Ayesha is invited to the social event of the year – India’s hen do. Except it’s not that kind of hen do, it’s a goddess retreat. But in a Buckinghamshire mansion with secret rooms full of the ghosts of slavery and colonialism, and with an ostracised member of the group seemingly out for revenge, the night quickly becomes a living nightmare. Ayesha is soon fleeing for her life, into the dark woods that surround the mansion and the lake beyond where a ghostly hand claws at her from below the depths. As the goddess retreat turns deadly, Ayesha discovers what happens when you deviate from the script, how far they will go to stop you stepping out of the circle, and the price you pay to finally belong.

Nina Millns is an award-winning playwright and script editor whose work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, and she has recently written various episodes for the Dr Who audio drama. As an activist, Nina was celebrated by the Huffington Post on International Women’s Day for her involvement in the UK #MeToo movement. She has consulted on Equity Union’s report on sexual harassment in the industry, attended the House of Commons and works with On Road Media, a charity supporting activists engaging with the media.