Hunger and Thirst, my sixth novel, is published in the UK today by Fig Tree / Penguin. Of all my novels it’s the one that has the most of me in it. It’s set in the town where I went to art school, and stayed; Ursula, the main character works in the post room of the same art school; and she lives in the squat I lived in in 1989. But there the similarities end.

I’d love it if you bought it or borrowed it from a library and read it. If you like it, let me know what you think. Take a picture and put it on Substack, or take a picture of it on the tables or shelves in any bookshops you happen to step into and share it. I’d love to see.

Ursula, a famous and reclusive sculptor is being hounded by a true crime documentary maker. She wants to interview Ursula about the events that happened at The Underwood in 1987 when Ursula was sixteen. In the summer of that year she meets a colleague, Sue, who becomes her friend, and who dares her to do various things. ‘Your turn next,’ Sue says. Eventually Sue dares Ursula to kill someone and when Ursula actually does, she is haunted for the rest of her life.

If that sounds like your sort of thing, you can buy it from your lovely local independent book shop, who are very likely to have some signed copies (I signed several hundred for independents). Or you can buy it from Bookshop.org which supports independents. Or you can buy it from Waterstones.

I’d also love to see you at one of my forthcoming events. In person or online. More details here.

Happy reading!

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Penance by Eliza Clark is a really interesting take on how we consume true crime, how teenagers can be influenced by it, and how those that tell it do not / cannot tell it without some bias, or ( sometimes deliberate) misrepresentation. By us (me) reading this book - a novel, although it’s written as fact - how implicit am I in the ‘enjoyment’ of true crime? Where is the line between ‘enjoyment’ and acting out what you read? How much do tumblr and other social platforms that teenagers use contribute? It asks a lot of fascinating questions.

Penance is a novel masquerading as a non-fiction account of a murder of a teenager by three of her peers. We know from the start that the ‘author’, Alec Carelli has been discredited for illegally obtaining information, and fictionalising other parts. And yet it’s so easy to sink into the story as though it’s the truth.

Have you read this? Do you ‘enjoy’ true crime and do you feel a bit guilty if you do?

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London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe is going straight onto my books of the year. It’s non-fiction but it reads very much like fiction in its narrative, storytelling, characterisation and cliff-hangers. At the end of every section I thought I must put this down and do something else, and then PRK would drop something else in that meant I had to read on. Absolutely propulsive and addictive.

I know people who have listened to this, read by PRK and they’ve said it’s also excellent, although he mispronounces a lot of the English place names. 😁

In November 2019 19-year-old Zac Brettler jumps to death from a balcony of a swanky London flat into the Thames. From long interviews with the family and others, Patrick Radden Keefe looks into Zac’s recent history and how and why he was posing as the son of a rich Russian oligarch. PRK rummages inside London’s underbelly, a world of gangsters, organised crime, money laundering and very scary men. There are no conclusions exactly but the writing is excellent and the story gripping.

Highly recommended.

Is this on your radar or have you read it already?

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Delirious by Damien Wilkins is already published in New Zealand where it won the country’s Book Prize, and will be published in the UK in August 2026.

I LOVED this novel and it’s jumped straight onto my top ten reads of the year. It reminds me of the Olive Kitteridge books by Elizabeth Strout, with the emotional preciseness of Sally Rooney’s writing.

Mary and Pete are in their seventies and contemplating moving from their house to a retirement village when Mary gets a call from a police officer telling her that he has some information about their son, Will who died many years ago when he was eleven.

I’ve made it sound like this is a big mystery, but it really isn’t - this is a book about a long marriage and what it has weathered. It’s a quiet book, stunningly written.

With precise emotional acuity, Wilkins shows us old age, old love, and old loss.

Thanks to Sceptre for the proof.

Does this sound like your kind of book?

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My sixth novel, Hunger and Thirst will be published on 7th May in the UK and early June in the US and Canada.

I’m doing a bit (a lot) of a book tour around England and I would love it if you could join me.

I’ll be in London, Oxford, Bristol, Hampshire, Whitley Bay, Herne Bay, Edinburgh and many more.

And if you can’t make an in-person event, I have several online events - some specifically for people writing their own novels (Bard Books and Bridport), and one - not listed above - for US and Canadian readers.

You can find out more information about all of these on my website, and book tickets. But do let me know if you have any questions.

I hope to see you soon.

Come to an event for Hunger and Thirst

My friend, Amanda lent me this book because I'm starting to write my seventh novel and I think it will be set in a garden that is being restored. And this is what The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing is about.

It had been on my shelf for a while, and I started reading it, and when I was maybe into the second or third chapter one breakfast, I thought, this is good, I'm going to have to buy my own copy. I put it down and I went outside to check my free little library outside my house as I do every morning, and there was a new copy of The Garden Against Time. Sitting inside, that very day.

With her husband, Laing buys a house in Suffolk with a garden that is crying out for restoration. Throughout the book we learn about Laing's research into her garden, the physical work she does, and the plants she chooses.

At the same time she examines other gardens and their owners: real and imagined. Including Paradise Lost by Milton, Clare's poetry, Derek Jarman's garden, and those that were created with the money from slavery. It's all fascinating stuff. I loved the sections where she was working on her own garden and I kept thinking I wanted those to continue, and then we would move into the history and thoughts about a different garden and I would want that to continue too.

There was also a lovely connection between William Morris‘s house (which Laing also writes about) and his rose garden.

My late father-in-law, Don had once been the custodian of Kelmscott Manor and always had a great fondness for the place. Many years later, after he had retired and moved away he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. A couple of his friends took him back to Kelmscott one last time to see the rose garden in particular which Don had replanted. And when he was there, in the garden, he had a heart attack and died. ❤️

Have you read this or any of Laing’s books?

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A Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans is a warm, funny, comfort read, full of brilliant characters who leap off the page and straight onto my list of best books of the year.

It’s just after the second world war, and Dimperley, owned by the Vere-Thissett family for generations, is in a bad way. It always was a mishmash of a house but now Valentine, home from the war minus a couple of fingertips, finds himself as the reluctant heir trying to discover a way to keep the place from going under. When the National Trust decline to take it on, Zena Baxter - a young woman who is hiding a secret while helping Uncle Alaric write a long boring history of the family - comes up with a plan to save the house.

It’s all good-natured fun and so well-written, I loved every moment.

I’ll be speaking with Lissa about the book at Winchester Books Festival on 19th April, and I’d love it if you could join us.

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I can’t decide what I think of this book, because there are bits I really liked (the ending, and the whole hospital section), and bits that worked less well (the main character’s visits to family and old friends), but maybe Markovits is being cleverer than I think.

A few years ago Tom’s wife had an affair and he decided that when his youngest child goes to college, he would leave the marriage. When he drops his daughter off, he remembers this and just keeps driving. He visits a friend, his brother, and an old girlfriend.

In life he can’t seem to settle and often questions what he should be doing, changing his mind constantly, and maybe that’s why the whole novel’s structure seems meandering - as a reflection of Tom’s state of mind. He becomes ill on his journey until he ends up at his son’s house and is hospitalised.

The Rest of Our Lives made the Booker Prize shortlist and my Librarian Husband chose this for our book club. He loved it, and most people weren’t sure. A bit like me.

Have you read it? What did you think?

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I’m still thinking about Eradication by Jonathan Miles, and that’s a good thing.

Adi is grieving the death of his 11-year-old son and the end of his marriage when he gets a job on a pacific island that he is supremely unqualified for: to shoot all the 3,000 or so goats that are killing the indigenous species. The goats are there because whalers dropped them off in order to have some food when they next came past the island. Can Adi rectify the environmental mistakes that humans have made?

Adi is dropped off with supplies for three weeks and tries to set about shooting the goats, but he cannot, or he mostly cannot. Instead he stumbles across a couple of drunk and dangerous men who are illegally catching sharks for their fins.

It’s extremely well written and also very graphic in its scenes of animal cruelty. The moral question about whether we can undo the environmental disasters we’ve caused is clear and an interesting question. I would have liked a little more of Adi’s backstory so that I really felt his grief, and therefore understood more of the choices he makes.

Still, recommended.

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Oh my goodness, so good, so devastating. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is on my list for my books of the year. I listened to this an an audiobook from XigXag, read by the author.

It's a memoir about Michelle's relationship with her Korean mother (she has an American father and they live in the US) which was difficult growing up, but changes when her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer and Michelle becomes the carer and begins to see things differently. It's also about their shared love of Korean food.

It is written beautifully but plainly and that is hard to get right.

I was listening to it as I was driving up to my dad's flat to continue the process of clearing after he died last year, so of course so much was poignant and personal, but I think even if you haven't lost someone close to you, Zauner has such a clearsighted way of describing familial relationships that I think this book would touch anyone.

Have you read this? What did you think?

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I love that Lily King has her preoccupations that crop up again and again, here in this collection of ten short stories and in her novels: babysitting, time in France, a sense of nostalgia, waitressing, weddings, but most of all, love.

My Librarian Husband and I read these to each other over the course of a couple of weeks, and I loved nearly all (to be fair there are always some stories that I love less in any collection).

In When in the Dordogne a girl is looked after by two young men while her parents are in France and I was left with a wonderful sense of nostalgia and paths not taken.

In Creature, a girl is hired to look after some children one summer, when their uncle makes a pass at her.

And in Mansard, a woman flirts with her friend's father, and then tries to find him with the only clue she has: that he lives in a house with a mansard roof. Beautiful writing, wonderful stories.

We’re looking for some more collections that we can read to each other. Do you have any you’d recommend?

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I’ll be teaching a two-hour flash fiction workshop on 29th March at Wycombe Museum from 1pm - 3pm. Whether you’ve never written flash fiction or any kind of creative writing before, or if you’ve lots of experience, this workshop is for you.

Using the current exhibition called Truth or Folly, we’ll be exploring the artwork on display and writing very very short stories inspired by what we see.

Tickets are £10.

Book here

Nine great stories in this third collection from Lauren Groff - with a long almost novella sized one in the middle (What's the Time Mr Wolf) which was probably my favourite.

But there were lots of others to love too: To Sunland where siblings have recently lost their mother and the daughter is taking the son to live in a home, and Brawler about a girl who dives and cares for her mother.

It's hard to find a linked theme (and that's the joy for me of this collection), but perhaps what goes on beneath the surface of families. My #librarianhusband and I read them to each other.

Thanks to Penguin for this proof. This is just published in the US and the UK

Do you read short stories? Any favourite collections?

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I don't read a lot of historical fiction but the survival element of Isola by Allegra Goodman intrigued me.

It did take quite a while to get there, but by the middle of the book, I couldn't put it down.

It's based on the scant information we know about a real noblewoman in the 1500s who is orphaned and a ward of her cousin. Marguerite has no agency (of course) and her guardian gambles away her house and money, and then travels to New France (Canada) and takes her with him. On board ship she falls in love with her cousin's secretary, and when their affair is discovered her guardian leaves them with her maid on an empty island.

Goodman has filled in all the holes in the real story with her imagination and she's done it very well. I really enjoyed this.

Do you have any survival novels you can recommend?

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Wow, this book. Well, the middle of this book. I loved it, but I'm still reeling.

The writing is great, as is the voice of the narrator, Kenji, and how the suspense builds...

Kenji is a 20-year-old Japanese man who takes tourists on tours of the sex bars and love hotels in Tokyo. Over three nights he shows Frank around, an overweight American who behaves more and more oddly. A horrible murder of a teenage girl has just been discovered and Kenji begins to suspect dead-eyed Frank, who tells stories about a lobotomy when he was younger and the ability to hypnotise, but is Kenji just paranoid.

Then, the middle of the book, which is graphic full on horror, but now I've finished does make sense. So, a warning, but also a recommendation.

Can you take unease in your fiction? Scariness? Full blown horror? Where are you on the fright scale, I’d love to know.

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Other People’s Lives is what they call a quiet book I suppose, in that nothing dramatic happens, but what I loved is that it is shouting about women in mid-life - those caring for the elderly and caring for their children, and women questioning the choices they made so blithely when they were younger. MacMahon is so good at understanding and describing what might be seen as minor challenges, but are exactly what make up our real lives.

Justine has been married to her best friend’s brother for 25 years. Iseult (the best friend) left Ireland when she married her husband, Simon, so Justine is the daughter left to look after not only her own family but also her in-laws. Justine still has her twin sons at home when her daughter announces her surprise engagement and marriage, and Justine is called on from every direction, while at the same time questioning her own marriage.

Other People’s Lives is a brilliantly observed, funny, poignant and utterly real portrait of a mid-life woman and her family. I loved it.

It will be published by Penguin Sandy Cove (Ireland) in May and you can pre-order it now. Thanks to the publisher for my proof.

Any quiet books about women in mid-life that you’d like to recommend?

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My US publisher Tin House / Zando is giving away 100 copies of the ebook of Swimming Lessons to US readers on Goodreads.

Enter the Giveaway

Swimming Lessons was my second novel and is about a mother, Ingrid, who writes letters to her husband about their terrible marriage and hides them in the books that he collects, before disappearing off a Dorset beach. And a daughter, Flora, who returns home wanting answers for what happened to her mother, without realising that they are in the books that surround the family in the house.

It was a Book of the Month pick, and was shortlisted for the Encore Prize for second novels.

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There are two time periods in this The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter: a remembered early 1980s when the main character, Steve was eleven and living with his parents in California; a time of his parents' pool parties, first love, and when his father's mental health issues overwhelmed him and he disappeared. And the present day when Steve is on a temporary separation from his wife (leaving his son too) and is visiting all the men who knew his father at the time he left, to question them about what happened.

I much preferred the 1980s sections of sunlight, water and music. Written with a wonderful sense of nostalgia.

I had some issues with the present day sections in that Steve doesn't know what he's searching for (which is an understandable human challenge) which for me, stopped all narrative drive. The people he visits mostly don't tell him anything he hasn't already worked out.

And I was also a little frustrated with the number of 'I remember's which once you start seeing, you can't stop.

I'd still recommend it, for the writing, for the sense of childhood and how difficult it can be to understand adults and their choices when you're eleven.

Have you read this? What did you think?

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Sad and hopeful, devastating and joyful: Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt manages all at once. The writing is wonderful and Boyt does something unexpected with the point of view, but it works so well. I'm not going to tell you what because it will give the ending away.

Ruth is a teacher with a daughter, Eleanor who is a drug addict. Eleanor's unhealthy and dangerous life is no place for a baby, but she has one: Lily. When Ruth finds someone who has overdosed in Eleanor's flat and after the baby's chaotic christening, Ruth offers her daughter an envelope of cash in return for Lily. And from then on, Ruth with the help of her female friends raises Lily on her own.

Their relationship is tender and warm, so wonderful to read. I had no idea how this book would end, but it's ending is perfect.

Let me know what are your favourite lesser known literary sad / happy books.

It appears that this has finally been published in the US as well, and don’t you just love this cover? I find it much more striking than the UK edition, above. Tell me which you prefer.

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Have you started writing a novel but now you’re confused? Unsure? Bogged down? Or just want to finish?

Join two bestselling authors for an expert-led one-day Novel Writing Masterclass in Winchester, Hampshire.

Following their successful, sold-out masterclass in 2025, Oxford University Creative Writing tutor and author, Lucy Atkins, and Costa Prize Winning author and creative writing teacher, Claire Fuller are once again teaching one-day novel writing masterclass.

What makes this Novel Writing Masterclass so unique?

Creative writing courses can be, at best, underwhelming – at worst, downright misleading. This one-day masterclass is different. Lucy and Claire not only have extensive experience teaching Creative Writing at the very highest level, they have a proven track record as published authors of bestselling, critically-acclaimed, award-winning novels.

In short, they know what makes a good book – and they know how to teach you!

With ten published novels between them, they also understand how complex and difficult writing can be. This masterclass, which takes place in central Winchester, Hampshire, offers a unique opportunity to learn from and ask questions of two experienced writers and Creative Writing tutors. For this reason, places are strictly limited to 14.

Who is this Masterclass for?

This day is aimed specifically at writers who have started writing a novel but not yet finished.

You will learn to:

• Understand how a plot that builds can move your writing forward

• Create compelling characters

• Analyse your first 30 pages and see what is and isn’t working

• Master the all-important skill of self-editing

• Prepare your novel so that is is ready to send out to literary agents

You’ll leave inspired and energised with a toolbox of practical tips, strategies and ideas that you can apply to your own work. And perhaps most importantly, you’ll gain renewed enthusiasm, energy and a sense of creative direction.

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