A clever, gripping thriller — a Da Vinci Code for those who like their prose to be elegant as well as page-turning

Magnificent...Clever, gripping, and a nifty thriller to boot

Into the Fire is a wonderful blend of fast and furious action, bravura storytelling, a palpable sense of place - Orléans past and present - and a whodunnit that will keep you guessing until the final pages. Fabulous.

Wonderful...Combines the two things I love most: thrillers and historical fiction

Expertly blends a very plausible solution to a genuine historical mystery with a compulsive contemporary thriller. The result, as the title suggests, is intoxicatingly fiery reading

Manda Scott’s writing is so grippingly vivid that once you begin reading, it becomes your reality. Highly recommended

To say I was blown away is an understatement of the greatest magnitude. Into the Fire is in a word, magnificent. Page turning. Visceral. Mesmerising. Evocative - it's so evocative. It's filthy-nailed, sweat-stained, blood-drenched, gut-wrenching, tear-inducing. It's everything I want a book to be – I did not want it to end

An absorbing thriller that cleverly unites the past and the present

Riveting for both the pulse-pounding action and the moral and character complexity

Exceptionally well-paced, and altogether a real treat

Manda Scott is an amazing writer who constantly subverts our expectations. As a historical novelist, she has a habit of showing us the familiar from unexpected angles. In the process, her books reveal overlooked truths about the past. Her crime novels and thrillers, on the other hand, display an author entirely at home with the issues and technologies of the present, as well as a mistress of her craft. Into The Fire is Manda Scott’s best book yet, which is saying a great deal. It’s not just a crackingly good thriller and a ground-breaking historical novel. It also changes the way we think about a key episode in history.

Cleverly plotted, taut and febrile...Scott's writing is swift and vigorous, a far cry from many of the weedy, court-bound historical novels of today...Salty and vivid, and persuasively evoke[s] not only the brimstone of war but the lives and patterns of thought of its participants

The pace never falters. Scott weaves together a thriller ‘save the universe in 45 minutes’ plotline with compelling historical narrative . . . Into The Fire deserves to be widely read and talked about

Beautifully written, well researched, and gripping

An ingenious and thrilling read...A masterclass in writing historical fiction

A shadowy and superbly told story.

A very impressive debut novel.

Superb storytelling.

The story is utterly compelling.

Nail-biting climax.

A story that is constantly surprising, occasionally hilarious, but undoubtedly dark… Embrace its unsettling hedonism.

Thrilling to read.

Moshfegh’s writings stands out in several spectacular ways... In detail and texture the world she creates is unsettlingly vivid: a considerable achievement for a writer born so long after the era she depicts…. Eileen's anger and frustration dominate her story, helping to create a seamless mood of menace... Moshfegh's debut novel is set to attain classic status within the thriller genre.

An impressive character study full of subtle nuances, shrouded in mystery.

Eileen is an accomplished, disturbing and creepily funny first novel… Moshfegh’s control of tone and pace is masterly, her ventriloquism impeccable, and the period detail unobtrusively spot-on. I was occasionally reminded of Nabokov and Lena Dunham, among others, but her voice is her own, and immensely promising.

Moshfegh’s fine, clear, short sentences carry complex thought and emotional revelation effortlessly.

Moshfegh’s boldness is admirable.

Moshfegh is a rising star… Eileen, her expertly paced debut novel concerns a dowdy prison clerk who lives with her gin-soaked father… Moshfegh delivers a thumping finish, leaving the reader dumbstruck by her sly, wicked storytelling genius.

A conspicuous nomination as a new voice. The cult following Moshfegh has amassed in only four short years, with steady championing by the Paris Review.

It reminded me of Lolita... Dark and fierce.

Moshfegh is, without a doubt, a very, very good writer… There’s lots of these wonderful moments. Moshfegh’s writing is at its most compelling and chilling when she delicately and intricately weaves the most finely spun…of spiders webs around her readers head… Eileen is a pretty brilliant debut novel.

Moshfegh’s exploration of deep and lasting emotional damage is quite brilliant.

A dazzling, original novel with nourish flourishes voiced by a wickedly sardonic narrator’

The Man Booker shortlist has just been announced… Our favourite is Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh.

The character of Eileen is fascinating and Moshfegh’s creation is the reason this has made the longlist. Naive, unpredictable and able to elicit responses from sympathy to revulsion from the reader but throughout you will her to get her life back on track and escape both the prison she works in and the one she has created for herself. I would be very happy to see this on the shortlist.

This is eerie, Hitchcockian and refreshingly original.

Sex, death, revenge and abuse run like dark currents beneath every page and come together in a brilliantly sustained denouement in which all the novel’s motifs…cohere and resonate.

A striking and ingenious work… She elevates Eileen from mediocrity to magnificence, in a feat that is nothing short of miraculous… The mark of reading a true master of suspense… Demands to be reread… At once chilling, ambitious and unexpected, Eileen is undoubtedly deserving of its Booker Prize nomination, and, dare I say it, of a win.

[It is] gripping… The writing is brilliant.

A very dark, morbid tale… I loved it, because it’s a really original voice that draws you into a dark psychology.

A clever, eloquent and captivating debut novel.

[It is] thrillingly playful.

The most grimly compelling fiction came from a new voice: Ottessa Moshfegh’s Man Booker-shortlisted Eileen. It takes nerve to create such a thoroughly dislikeable narrator… It is like someone reaching into a bottomless bag of gifts.

I loved its refreshingly dark and complicated protagonist and grubbily vivid sense of time and place. Eileen reads like a smart, feminist take on Hitchcock or Highsmith and was, for that reason, impossible to put down.

[Eileenis] compulsively deviant and utterly delicious… I savoured every single word of it.