Blue Ticket

BRITISH VOGUE 'STAR OF THE FUTURE'<BR><BR>INDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE<BR><BR>'A gripping, sinister fable' Margaret Atwood<BR><BR>'An extraordinary debut - otherworldly, luminous, precise' Guardian<BR><BR>'Bold, inventive, haunting . . . With shades of Margaret Atwood and Eimear McBride, you'll be bowled over by it' Stylist<BR><BR>A hypnotic coming-of-age story for fans of The Power, The Vegetarian, I Who Have Never Known Men and The Girls<BR><BR>Grace, Lia and Sky live in an abandoned hotel, on a sun-bleached island, beside a poisoned sea. Their parents raised them there to keep them safe, to make them good. The world beyond the water is contaminated and men are the contamination. But one day three strangers wash ashore - men who stare at the sisters hungrily, helplessly. Men who bring trouble.<BR><BR>*****<BR><BR>'A feminist fable set by the sea, a female Lord of the Flies. It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time' Emma Jane Unsworth<BR><BR>'Visceral, hypnotic, with one of my favourite endings I've read in a long while' The Pool<BR><BR>'An unsettling dark fantasy... [It] lingers long after the final page' Daily Telegraph

One of the most anticipated books of 2026 as chosen by: Vogue, Stylist, Forbes, Oprah Daily and LitHub<BR><BR>'Like Severance for relationships' Oprah Daily<BR><BR>'Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out' Lauren Elkin<BR><BR>'It will stay with me for a long time' Monica Heisey<BR><BR>This is the story of an affair. Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing stolen afternoons in hotel rooms, their time together painfully sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there.<BR><BR>They find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar city: a place where adulterers can live openly as couples, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice. Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on the table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible. As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other.<BR><BR>How do you know when you've found true love? How much would you sacrifice to keep hold of it? And how long can you stay in paradise before the cracks start to show?<BR><BR>From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure and Cursed Bread comes an intoxicating modern love story. Permanence is a thrillingly erotic and sharply relatable portrait of longing and obsession, intimacy and betrayal, possession and dispossession.

GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS<BR>LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2023<BR>LONGLISTED FOR THE NOTA BENE PRIZE 2024<BR><BR>From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure comes a chilling new feminist fable based on the true story of an unsolved mystery . . .<BR><BR>'A shimmering fever-dream of a novel' Telegraph<BR><BR>Spring, 1951. Four people meet in a small French town: the baker and his wife; the ambassador and his wife. Two belong to the town, two are outsiders.<BR><BR>Some time later, strange things start happening. Horses drop dead in the fields. Children grow wild and unbiddable. Ghosts are sighted after dark. Someone is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse - but who is the predator and who their prey?<BR><BR>Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a darkly erotic mystery about a town gripped by madness, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.<BR><BR>'A dreamy sapphic romp' The Times<BR><BR>'Gauzy [and] gripping, a quietly rich maturation of Mackintosh's skill' Guardian<BR><BR>The Spectator Book of the Year 2023