The Water Cure

From the author longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction and selected as one of the Best Young British Novelists of the Decade:<BR><BR>An unsettling and addictive feminist fable for fans of I Who Have Never Known Men, Hot Milk, Unsettled Ground and Klara and the Sun <BR><BR>Recommended by Stylist, Evening Standard, Esquire, Red, Daily Mail, Oprah Magazine, LitHub, and Belletrist Book Club<BR><BR>'Be sure to read everything Sophie Mackintosh writes' Deborah Levy<BR><BR>'Definitely don't miss the return of Sophie Mackintosh' Stylist<BR><BR>Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the lottery station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you children. A blue ticket grants you freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. Or, to put it another way, you have no choice. And once you've taken your ticket, there is no going back.<BR><BR>But what if the life you're given is the wrong one?<BR><BR>Blue Ticket is a devastating enquiry into free will and the fraught space of motherhood. Bold and chilling, it pushes beneath the skin of female identity and patriarchal violence, to the point where human longing meets our animal bodies.<BR><BR>'Dreamlike, tense, compelling, [with] a pitch-perfect ending' The New York Times<BR><BR>'Gripping, ethereal, atmospheric' Sunday Times<BR><BR>'Thoughtful and haunting' Observer<BR><BR>'Terrifying and enchanting in equal measure' LitHub<BR><BR>'Blue Ticket will worms its way under your skin and haunt your dreams' Red

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