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Bad Gods
Bad Gods
Jan 18, 2026 10:43 PM

Author:Gaie Sebold,Lucy Paterson

Bad Gods

Brought to you by Penguin.

All Tastes! All Species! All Currencies!

You can find anything in Scalentine, the city of portals, but you won't find a better brothel than the Red Lantern. And its proprietor, Babylon Steel (ex-mercenary, ex-priestess, ex... lots of things), means to keep it that way. But a prurient cult are protesting in the streets, sex workers are disappearing, and Babylon has bills to pay. When the powerful Diplomatic Section hires her - off the books - to find a missing heiress, she has to take the job. And then her past starts to catch up with her...

© Gaie Sebold (P) Penguin Audio and Rebellion Publishing 2022

Reviews

For us, here is a book that gives and gives, I loved every word of this phenomenally generous, nourishing and beautiful book

—— Salena Godden , author of Mrs Death Misses Death

A brilliant reminder that the answers we seek are within ourselves ... Yrsa Daley-Ward's words are a guidepost, a reminder, and a welcome home

—— Stephanie Long , Refinery29

A heartfelt, artful manifesto focused on living fully and authentically ... By turns simplistic, elegaic, and illuminative

—— Kirkus

In this gratifying exploration of the self, Daley-Ward excels at describing the indescribable ... this work defies genre and features a beautiful blend of lyrical prose and bold poetry... This is a tender, hopeful meditation

—— Publishers Weekly

So many readers are set to fall in love with this charming story.

—— Prima

Call of the Penguins sparkles with wit, courage and kindness. This is a heart-warming journey into the highs and lows of human nature. I loved it!

—— Celia Anderson, author of 59 Memory Lane

A wonderful story, full of twists and turns. Outstanding.

—— Samantha Tonge, author of Summer Secrets at Streamside Cottage

This year's Eleanor Oliphant . . . Funny, bittersweet and wholly original.

—— Daily Express (on Away with the Penguins)

A glorious, life-affirming story. I read it in a day.

—— Clare Mackintosh (on Away with the Penguins)

A touching, uplifting tale.

—— Jo Whiley, Radio 2 Book Club (on Away with the Penguins)

A gorgeous read full of hope, with a cast of characters who will delight!

—— Helen Paris, author of LOST PROPERTY

The perfect pick-me-up for right now, a warm-hearted, humorous and emotional read.

—— Phaedra Patrick, author of The Library of Lost and Found

There's much beauty and hope to be found in The Living Sea of Waking Dreams

—— Claire Webb , Radio Times

Many forms (including some erasures, among other visual frameworks, such as poems that look like text message bubbles) give this collection impressive variety. Gorman's thoughtfulness and activist spirit shine through on every page

—— Publishers Weekly

How Gorman has arrived so young at a place of such accomplishment is as compelling as her art itself... She is a Gen Z Angelino who brings the fresh self-awareness and frankness of youth to these pages with a prosody that is as playful as it is stern

—— Julie Lythcott-Haims , Independent

Amanda Gorman is a force to be reckoned with... [an] impressive collection... she's most poignant and shows her masterful use of the English language... pretty inspiring stuff from a young poet who's just at the start of her career

—— Prudence Wade , UK Press Syndication

Gorman is at her best when stripping things down... There, she's most poignant and shows her masterful use of the English language... inspiring stuff

—— Prudence Wade , Yorkshire Post

A fascinating portrait of a world of politics, manners, morals and the decline of empire in a period of rapid societal change... Hadley writes compellingly fascinating characters viewed from every angle, perfectly encapsulating an era of change.

—— Kirsty McLuckie , Scotsman

A gorgeously magnanimous novel, which reprises Hadley's favoured themes of middle age, and how - and when, and if - to change one's life.

—— Stephanie Sy-Quia , Spectator

Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive exploration of love, sexual freedom and living out the most meaningful version of our lives.

—— SheerLuxe

An engrossing ploy, elegant nuanced writing...this is a novel to savour

—— Morag MacInnes , Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

As ever, Ms Hadley's prose is limpid and measured yet richly sonorous: her story combines a modern sensibility with the psychological realism of writers such as Henry James... The ending glimmers with possibility--while suggesting that liberation comes at a cost.

—— Economist

With astute psychological awareness of her characters, Hadley presents a visceral and engaging picture of a bygone time. Unexpected twists and unclichéd characters support the luscious language, making this a real pleasure of a read.

—— UK Press Syndication

Free Love artfully delves beneath the veneer of the British middle class to tell an intimate story of generational discord, political change and sexual freedom.

—— Mark Vessery , i

Hadley's resplendent eighth novel... [has] poignantly astute observations on class, destiny and the false promises of the sexual revolution.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on Sunday

Hadley's eighth novel is as absorbing as any of her other fiction, with complex family secrets, brilliant insights...and lush descriptions of nature.

—— Markie Robson-Scott , Arts Desk

Hadley chooses her words with spellbinding precision.

—— Claire Allfree , Metro

Hadley's complex sentences are purring marvels of engineering... A brilliant writer of interiority...she has a gift...for portraying the state of wanting to be wanted, or simply to be seen... almost every page struck me anew with some elegant phrasing, feline irony or shrewdly sympathetic insight.

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

Few contemporary novelists write about their characters' inner worlds with a finely filigreed but plain-spoken acuity that Tessa Hadley brings to her work...accessing roving, rich depths... Hadley is a master in her field.

—— Lucy Scholes , Daily Telegraph

"With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she's one of the greatest stylists alive. . . . To read Hadley's fiction is to grow self-conscious in the best way: to recognize with astonishment the emotions playing behind our own expressions, to hear articulated our own inchoate anxieties. . . . The whole grief-steeped story should be as fun as a dirge, but instead it feels effervescent-lit not with mockery but with the energy of Hadley's attention, her sensitivity to the abiding comedy of human desire. . . . Extraordinary.

—— The Washington Post

Brilliant.... In the hands of a lesser novelist, the intricate tangle of lives at the center of Late in the Day would feel like just such a self-satisfied riddle or, at best, like sly narrative machinations. Because this is Tessa Hadley, it instead feels earned and real and, even in its smallest nuances, important.... It's to her credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once.... We've seen this before, and we've never seen this before, and it's spectacular.

—— New York Times Book Review

Utterly engrossing... Free Love is highly gratifying.

—— Ellen Peirson-Hagger , New Statesman

Free Love is a triumph.

—— Sarah Collins , Prospect

Brilliantly done... Hadley writes with devastating psychological insight, her prose spare and scalpel sharp. But she is also judiciously non-judgemental, a generous chronicler of the foibles and fears that mar and make a marriage.

—— Eithne Farry , Daily Express

Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.

—— Sarra Manning , Red

[A] brilliant, sensual, seductively plotted new novel... Hadley has written an extraordinary story about love and transformation.

—— Independent

Free Love is often deeply perceptive and affecting... it lets you imagine what it was like to wrestle with old and new ways of thinking in an age that shaped (and continues to shape) our own.

—— Guy Stevenson , Literary Review

It's the 1960s and socialism, sex and nuclear anxiety have come crashing into the middle-class bubble Tessa Hadley novels usually operate so brilliant within.

—— The Times, *Summer Reads of 2022*

A story about change and its limits, its beautifully judged ending will bring you to tears.

—— Daily Mail, *Summer Reads of 2022*

[An] acutely realised, deeply humane novel... Unmissable.

—— Tablet, *Summer Reads of 2022*

No novel published this year gave me more pleasure than Tessa Hadley's Free Love.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Nothing drew me in as conclusively as Free Love by Tessa Hadley, who is surely one of our most astute and deft observers of everyday lives.

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

Hadley's novels continue to get better and better - and this is her finest, most pleasurable yet... it's near enough the perfect present in book form

—— Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*

She is, in all her mastery of the craft, a writer's writer.

—— Marie Claire
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