Quilt on Fire

'A wildly entertaining and necessary book' Elizabeth Day, author of Magpie <BR><BR>An honest conversation about Christie Watson's journey through midlife and how to navigate new challenges of a changing body. <BR><BR>In her early twenties, Christie Watson was convinced she'd found her soulmate, in a glowing flash of light that turned out to be a tealight setting her quilt on fire. Twenty years later, her bed is burning once again... as she wakes in a perimenopausal sweat, night after night.<BR><BR>This is the story of her journey through midlife: of the joy of letting go and the pain of the morning after, of the unstoppable power of female friendship and the struggle to raise teenagers as a single parent. It lays bare the exhilaration, agony, wonder and fears of being a middle-aged woman with a wild heart, a changing body and a new set of challenges. And as her world takes on a different shape, there's something else she starts to feel: the hot flush of possibility...<BR><BR>'A must-read for every woman' Jacqueline Wilson, author of The Story of Tracy Beaker <BR><BR>'A laugh-out-loud, haunting and beautifully crafted manual' Dreda Say Mitchell, author of Say Her Name <BR><BR>'Wickedly funny, deliciously candid and deeply moving' Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life<BR><BR>'Give Quilt on Fire to your daughter, mother, sister, friends. A howlingly good midlife battle cry' Jess Kidd, author of Things in Jars<BR><BR>'Brilliant... Like having an honest conversation with a smart and funny friend' Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of Dear Reader

You're trained to save the lives of others. How far would you go to protect your own? Ruthlessly ambitious Olivia, anxious perfectionist Laura and free-spirited risk-taker Anjali couldn't be more different. Yet their friendship, which began on the first day of medical school, has kept them inseparable for twenty-five years. As wild all-nighters and exam pressures gave way to the struggles and joys of new motherhood and intense jobs, their bond remained unbreakable. Years ago they promised that nothing would come between them and that they'd do anything for one another, including burying one night they have never spoken about: a drug-fuelled university party that forced them to make a deadly choice that could still destroy them. When an eerily similar tragedy strikes involving their teenage children, everything the three women have built threatens to shatter around them. And they are left asking: just how far can you stretch a friendship before it snaps?

Christie Watson is an award-winning, bestselling writer. She has a special interest in nursing and mental health having spent twenty years working as a nurse, and holds an honorary Doctor of Letters for her contribution to nursing and the arts. She is Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation. Her first novel, Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, won the Costa First Novel and Waverton Good Read Awards and her second novel, Where Women Are Kings, also achieved international critical acclaim. Her non-fiction The Language of Kindness, was published in 2018 and was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. It was a Book of the Year in the Evening Standard, New Statesman, The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. It has been translated into twenty-three languages, and spent five months in the Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller lists. It is currently being adapted for theatre and television. (lib)