Throw Me to the Wolves is, on the face of it, a made-for-TV procedural police drama… Scratch the surface, however, and all of Britain’s restless undercurrents are churning away… this is literary fiction as it should be: in stylish, surprising, lyrical sentences we are forced to confront the hidden power structures, public and private, that control our everyday lives. It’s reminiscent of Edward St Aubyn, not only in its pillorying of the elite, but the pleasure McGuinness takes in having his characters say clever things. It’s also a proper page-turner.

This is a writer worth knowing… [McGuinness] combines elegant prose with caustic commentary on romance, education and crime… most people can write for a lifetime and not produce so perfect a sentence.

Blisteringly effective, written with an almost hallucinogenic clarity… Throw Me to the Wolves is intensely powerful.

An extraordinary writer of great compassion, McGuinness combines a mesmerising crime novel with a forensic look at the brutalising mechanisms of the British Public School system. Stunning.

An absorbing novel… on virtually every page, there are perfectly judged descriptions that reveal something about the world.

This second novel from Man Booker-longlisted McGuinness is a compassionate, funny and ultimately moving indictment of the gutter press, social media and boarding schools.

Throw Me to the Wolves could be described as a crime novel or as a State of the Nation novel. It fits into both those categories, but it offers much more than such convenient labels would suggest. It's a book seriously concerned with, and about, people who function on the fringe of society. Patrick McGuinness is an observant and reflective storyteller of a special kind.

A big, serious, elegantly written, darkly entertaining study of what school does to us, and how life afterwards can turn into a nightmare. McGuinness is a novelist of the old school, where the best and most lasting lessons were taught.

Intelligent and troubling… [Throw Me To The Wolves] invites reflection about the state of morality today, about the lust for witch-hunts and the zeal to punish.

Brilliant.

McGuinness plays… [the plot] out beautifully, allowing each aspect of the story to resonate meaningfully with the others… [he lets] the story unspool at its own pace while he explores all its facets in clean prose polished to the point of translucence.

McGuinness is an intelligent and thoughtful writer, and his portrait of detective Ander is fully of wry observations about modern life and societal change.

Thoughtful, sometimes provocative… at the heart of [Throw Me to the Wolves] is a moving meditation on childhood and the ways in which it lives on in all of us.

Heaberlin knows how to build to a truly shocking twist, how to break a reader's heart and then begin mending it

Praise for Julia Heaberlin

A beautifully written and extraordinary book

A thriller to remember why you love thrillers

Strong characterisation, haunting images, a wonderful sense of place

Rich, multilayered characters . . . I wanted to sit and savor her beautiful prose but the twisty plot and unexpected revelations propelled me through this spine-chilling novel . . . absolutely mesmerizing

The author of Black-Eyed Susans returns with an elegantly written tale, set in a world where women are vulnerable and men are dangerous, the finger of suspicion pointing at them all

An emotionally charged story . . . there are so many layers to Heaberlin's story which keeps the mystery going right up until the end

Praise for Julia Heaberlin

A thriller to remember why you love thrillers

Strong characterisation, haunting images, a wonderful sense of place

A beautifully written and extraordinary book

A timely and powerful literary thriller which makes for a thought-provoking and unsettling read

Thought provoking and intelligent . . . I cannot recommend highly enough.

Offers a really interesting perspective on how women are represented in life

It is insidiously unnerving in such a clever way . . . had me well and truly hooked!

Dark, unforgiving, suspenseful and thought-provoking

Campus novel satire and the high drama of a thriller combine in a fiendishly readable interrogation of the allure of violent fiction

One of the most believable heroines I've seen on the page in a long time. The final chapters deliver the heart-in-mouth genre denouement we’ve been waiting for

A brilliant portrayal of love and complex family relationships, with all the features of a Gothic mystery.

A lushly written, psychologically suspenseful narrative that's not easily forgotten.

A darkly disquieting thriller... The descriptions are vivid enough to stop you in your tracks, and the narrative draws to a psychologically apt conclusion.

A multi-dimensional shocker, where everything is not as clear cut as it initially seems, leading to a devastating conclusion. Fans of the darker and more mysteriously menacing work of Stephen King or the contemporary horror of Andrew Michael Hurley will adore Sisters.

Johnson has cultivated a striking style with recurring images and themes... [her] stories contain minimal dialogue and very little straightforward narration. They are instead characterised by the accumulation of sensory detail, the gradual revealing of character, and a building sense of dread.

Johnson pulls off a great feat in this book. We are propelled by her story, even while we barely know what it is; absorbed by characters at once abstract yet fully drawn. She allows just enough clarity to pierce through, like flashes of an image amid white noise, until finally we can grasp and appreciate the whole picture that has so thrillingly eluded us.

Sisters echoes Brontë's Wuthering Heights not only in its gothic elements and sombre descriptions of English landscapes but also in the idea of doomed love, love which becomes an omnipotent, harmful power... Sisters is chilling and unrestful in a way many horror stories aren't, the world of the novel itself a disturbing and anxious place.

An absorbing tale of sibling love and envy.

It's hard to deny the uncanny thrill generated by Johnson's blend of horror, nature writing and magical realism... As dazzling as a photographer's flash.

Held me rapt until the very end

I didn't want to put it down

A beautiful and intriguing page-turner

Rich and atmospheric