fiction

The Porpoise

The Porpoise Chatto & Windus, May 2019. “A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash. She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the rumours about a beautiful young woman, hidden from the world. When a suitor visits, he understands far more than he should. Forced to run for his life, he escapes aboard The Porpoise, an assassin on his tail… So begins a wild adventure of a novel, damp with salt spray, blood and tears. A novel that leaps from the modern era to ancient times; a novel that soars, and sails, and burns long and bright; a novel that almost drowns in grief yet swims ashore; in which pirates rampage, a princess wins a wrestler’s hand, and ghost women with lampreys’ teeth drag a man to hell – and in which the members of a shattered family, adrift in a violent world, journey towards a place called home.”

The Pier Falls

The Pier Falls short stories, Jonathan Cape, 2016. “An expedition to Mars goes terribly wrong. A seaside pier collapses. A thirty-stone man is confined to his living room. One woman is abandoned on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. Another woman is saved from drowning. Two boys discover a gun in a shoebox. A group of explorers find a cave of unimaginable size deep in the Amazon jungle. A man shoots a stranger in the chest on Christmas Eve.” The Gun was shortlisted for the 2013 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and won an O. Henry Prize in 2014. The title story The Pier Falls was longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 2015. Bunny was the runner-up for the BBC National Short Story Award 2015.

The Red House

The Red House Jonathan Cape, 2012. “After his mother's death, Richard, a newly remarried hospital consultant, decides to build bridges with his estranged sister, inviting Angela and her family for a week in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children, a single family and all of them strangers. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks. But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours. And watching over all of them from high on the dark hill, Karen, Angela's stillborn daughter. The Red House is about the extraordinariness of the ordinary, weaving the words and thoughts of the eight characters together with those fainter, stranger voices - of books and letters and music, of the dead who once inhabited these rooms, of the ageing house itself and the landscape in which it sits.”

A Spot of Bother

A Spot of Bother Jonathan Cape, 2006. “At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels, listening to a bit of light jazz. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has 'strangler's hands'. Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the way he cares for her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by the way the wedding planning gets in the way of her affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.” Shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, 2006

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Jonathan Cape,

2003, Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2003, Booktrust Teenage Prize 2003, Spoken Word Audiobook of the Year 2003, Whitbread Book of the Year Award 2004, Southbank Show Literature Award 2004, Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book Award 2004, LA Times First Fiction Award, WH Smith Children’s Book of the Year 2004, Waterstones Literary Fiction Award 2004, Silver Kiss (Holland) 2004, Yalsa Alex Award (USA) 2004, Grand Prix, Sankei Children’s Book Awards (Japan) 2004, McKitterick Prize 2004, Premio Serono (Italy) 2004, Premio Boccaccio (Italy) 2004, Waverton Good Read Award 2004.

The novel was adapted for the stage by Simon Stephens and produced by the National Theatre in 2012, directed by Marianne Elliott with movement by Frantic Assembly, starring Luke Treadaway, Nicola Walker, Paul Ritter, Una Stubbs and Niamh Cusack. It transferred to the Apollo (and then the Gielgud) in the west End the following year and won seven Olivier Awards in 2013; a Broadway production was staged at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2014 and won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play. Subsequently there have been two UK tours, a US tour and an International Tour. The production returned to the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End in 2018. There have been many other productions around the world, all using the same adaptation.