WINDMILL HILL
PUBLISHED BY QUERCUS
A ‘Best Summer Books’ pick in both the GUARDIAN and the OBSERVER
‘Rich in charm and surprises ’ PATRICK GALE, GUARDIAN
Transporting and entertaining’ THE TIMES
‘A triumph. Funny, mysterious, moving, and ingenious . . . a Shakespearean knot of happiness all round’ PHILIP PULLMAN
‘Compulsive & skilfully woven’ CLARE CHAMBERS
‘I loved it. Glorious characters in an intriguing, brilliantly told story. And so funny!’ NINA STIBBE
‘A truly memorable story, I loved it’ JOANNA CANNON
‘Playful, brilliantly observed, with a plot that leaps and skips and surprises in the best possible ways. I loved it’ CLAIRE FULLER
“Packed with story, character, sadness, friendship and joy, charming and shocking by turns, and never fails to delight” MICK HERRON
‘I was entranced by this exquisitely written novel…I will be giving it to all my friends’ CLOVER STROUD
REVIEWS
‘Vivid, slightly unhinged characters, a plot tangle worthy of a kitten in a knitting bag and a richly atmospheric backdrop’ GUARDIAN
‘Has it all: evocative setting, fabulous characters, precision plotting, poignancy, laughs, dogs and surprises’ OBSERVER
‘Intelligent and gripping’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘Mesmerising . . . beautifully written’ LITERARY REVIEW
‘Cleverly constructed’ WOMAN & HOME
‘Powerful and deftly executed’ DAILY MAIL
‘Funny, moving… delicious writing’ DAILY EXPRESS
A single night in a remote hunting lodge with a Hollywood director and his leading lady causes an international scandal. It wrecks Astrid’s glittering stage career and rips apart her marriage. Astrid’s ex-husband, the charismatic Scottish actor Magnus Fellowes, goes on to find global fame while Astrid retreats to a disintegrating Sussex windmill.
Now 82, she lives there still, with a troupe of dachshunds and her long-suffering friend, Mrs Baker, who came to clean twenty years ago and never left. But the past is catching up on them. There has been an ‘Awful Incident’ at the windmill; the women are in shock. Then Astrid hears that Magnus, now on his death bed, is writing a tell-all memoir. Outraged, she sets off for Scotland, determined to stop him.
Windmill Hill is the story of two very different women, both with painful pasts and their eccentric friendship – deep, enduring, and loyal to the last.
Illustration for Windmill Hill by Nicola Howell
MAGPIE LANE
PUBLISHED BY QUERCUS
‘Standout’ Guardian BEST BOOKS OF 2020
‘For pure enjoyment it’s hard to beat’ TELEGRAPH ‘BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2020′
‘A tender, creepy and gripping tale’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Tense, perceptive and meticulously plotted – an intelligent exploration of privilege, belonging, grief and parental responsibility’ OBSERVER
‘Spellbinding and spooky. . . superbly absorbing’ SUNDAY MIRROR
‘Graceful writing, sharply observed characters . . . wonderfully atmospheric’ GUARDIAN
‘A rare thing . . . Simply stunning’ DAILY EXPRESS
‘Grown-up and cleverly written . . .a dizzying sense of uncertainty’ LITERARY REVIEW
‘Excellent . . . hard to put down’ DAILY MAIL
‘It’s been a while since I’ve been as sucked in by a thriller as I was with this one’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING ‘BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2020’
‘Dramatically delves into what it means to be family and how terrible this bond can be’ WOMAN & HOME
‘It is a long time since I have enjoyed a book as thoroughly as I enjoyed Magpie Lane, which reminded me variously of Iris Murdoch, Ruth Rendell, Donna Tartt and Daphne du Maurier. It was an utter joy to relish Atkins’s wonderfully skilled and unobtrustive writing’ Sarah Perry
‘Deliciously dark – keeps flipping your certainties on their head from start to finish’ Alexandra Shulman
‘A sinewy, supple and gorgeously satisfying triumph’ Lucy Mangan
‘Full of hidden chambers, and some of them are haunted . . .Part thriller, part love story, wholly beguiling’ Mick Herron
‘I’d lost my reading mojo when I started Magpie Lane but I was gripped virtually straight away. . . pleasurably bamboozled, moved and caught up in a highly original story’ Alex Clark
‘One of the most intriguing narrators since Notes on a Scandal – I loved it!’ Sarah Collins
‘Gripping. . . beautifully written’ Polly Samson
‘Clever and Creepy, twisty yet tender. Magpie Lane will have you hearing footsteps overhead in an empty house. I loved it’ Erin Kelly
‘Clever, tense and as twisty as an Oxford back street’ Amanda Craig
‘Dazzlingly good’ Diane Setterfield
‘That rare thing: a thriller that warms your heart even as it chills your spine. I adored it on so many levels – the page-turning tension, the emotional depth of the central relationship. Simply brilliant! JP Delaney
When the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers.
As Dee looks back over her time in the Master’s Lodging – an eerie and ancient house – a picture of a high achieving but dysfunctional family emerges: Nick, the fiercely intelligent and powerful father; his beautiful Danish wife Mariah, pregnant with their child; and the lost little girl, Felicity, almost mute, seeing ghosts, grieving her dead mother.
But is Dee telling the whole story? Is her growing friendship with the eccentric house historian, Linklater, any cause for concern? And most of all, why was Felicity silent?
Roaming Oxford’s secret passages and hidden graveyards, Magpie Lane explores the true meaning of family – and what it is to be denied one.
THE NIGHT VISITOR
PUBLISHED BY QUERCUS
‘Complex, creepy and insidious’ GUARDIAN
As high-flying TV presenter and historian Professor Olivia Sweetman stands before an adoring crowd at the launch of her new bestseller she can barely pretend to smile. Her life has spiralled into deceit and if the truth comes out she’ll lose everything. Only one person knows what Olivia has done. Vivian Tester is the socially awkward housekeeper of a Sussex manor who has become Olivia’s unofficial research assistant. But Vivian has her own secrets…
A Library Journal pick Best Books of 2018
Praise for The Night Visitor
‘An absolute cracker…Fantastic!’ SUNDAY MIRROR
‘Utterly gripping’ LITERARY REVIEW
‘Sinister, utterly compulsive…will keep your pulse racing until its dramatic denouement’ RED
‘Dripping with suspense, violence, and a bit of the supernatural’ LIBRARY JOURNAL Best Books of 2018 (USA)
‘Rich characterization…an alarmingly plausible rags-to-riches tale’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘A clever, read-in-one sitting completely compulsive novel. Five stars.’ METRO
‘Fabulously dark, deception filled’ WOMAN & HOME
‘A fascinating, brilliant, creepy, intelligent novel’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘Enjoyably creepy’ SUNDAY EXPRESS
‘Brilliantly believable… you will relish every page. Fantastic.’ PEOPLE
‘A gripping, Rendellesque read’ -Mick Herron
‘Lucy Atkins is, quite frankly, a genius’ – Joanna Cannon
‘Thrillingly creepy and darkly funny… brilliant plotting and characters that crackle off the page. A ‘cannot tear yourself away’ novel.’ – Kate Hamer
‘Wonderfully creepy, in that clever way that is tied in with character, as much as plot and setting… just ingenious’ – Sabine Durrant
‘Put me in mind of Misery, and Rebecca. Splendidly tense, creepy and enjoyable.” – Sarah Hilary
‘Alarmingly close to home…the sort of book you think about even when not reading, and stay up far later than you should to finish. Atkins is a master of suspense; she creates characters that you feel like you’ve met, and situations you never want to be in. Completely wonderful.’ – Dr Suzannah Lipscomb
THE OTHER CHILD
PUBLISHED BY QUERCUS, 2015
In just a few months, British photographer Tess has married Greg, an American paediatric heart surgeon, become pregnant and relocated with her eight year old son, Joe, to Boston, USA.
Life in an affluent American suburb is not as idyllic as it should be. Joe is unsettled, accusatory notes arrive at the house, and someone in the leafy street is watching Tess. As the fierce Boston winter closes in and the baby’s due date looms, Tess makes a jaw-dropping discovery that threatens everything.
A Woman & Home Magazine book club pick. Try a FREE extract
Buy the paperback here, Kindle here or Audiobook here
Praise for The Other Child
‘Addictive…a pace so relentless that you’ll want to inhale this novel in one uninterrupted sitting’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Atmospheric and packed with suspense, kept me on edge from start to finish’ WOMAN & HOME
‘Her characters speak as real people speak, behave as real people behave’ INDEPENDENT
‘ I read it in one sitting….brilliant at ramping up the tension so that there is no putting it down until the end’ Polly Samson
‘Seriously gripping, seriously scary and seriously brilliant….I absolutely loved this novel…I read it in terror and fascination’ Claire Kendal
‘Truly unnerving. The neck-prickling suspense starts on the very first page, building and building until I wanted to get in the car and drive to Boston to rescue Tess and Joe myself…. Not just one-more-page gripping but perceptive and beautifully written’ Lucie Whitehouse
‘Beautifully plotted with rich, deftly drawn characters…unfolds in lyric, atmospheric prose’ Priya Parmar
American edition cover, German cover, Norwegian cover …
THE MISSING ONE
PUBLISHED BY QUERCUS, 2014
“A gripping page turner”
-SUNDAY TIMES
American artist Elena always refused to talk about her life before she moved to Britain. But after Elena dies, her distraught daughter, Kal, decides to find out what happened to her mother all those years ago.\
On impulse, she takes Finn, her toddler son, and journeys to a tiny British Columbian island were she meets her mother’s one-time close friend Susannah, a powerful and enigmatic gallery owner. As a thick fog shuts down the island, Kal struggles to piece together what happened between the two women back in the 1970s. Susannah, meanwhile, is becoming worryingly preoccupied with little Finn…
The Missing One is the bestselling debut about grief, loss and the overpowering love of a mother for her child. Buy the book, buy the Kindle book or buy the audiobook
Praise for The Missing One:
‘A brilliant page turner that explores how we connect to our families – and what happens when it goes horribly wrong.’ PSYCHOLOGIES (Inaugural Book Club pick)
‘Creepy and tense . . . brilliantly gripping’ CLOSER
‘A moving and suspenseful tale of the secrets a family keeps’ Rachel Hore
‘A page-turning and suspenseful tale…a compelling emotional mystery’ Lucy Clarke
‘Beautifully written and compelling…a wonderful thriller that is such a strong portrayal of motherhood’ Sabine Durrant
lucy atkins 