[A] book that made me realise there are fewer boundaries in fiction than I'd believed

A chilling gothic thriller

An atmospheric, eerie read, perfect for autumn

A chilling and atmospheric tale…you are drawn into a haunting mystery that will keep you guessing

The Black Feathers has everything you could want in a Gothic novel, underpinned by a thrilling sense of menace. Reminiscent of Jane Eyre and The Silent Companions, the wild setting of the windswept Northern moors was a perfect backdrop for the rising tensions within Guardbridge, a grand old house in the finest tradition of English Gothic, keeping all sorts of secrets. Spooky, twisty, with a surprisingly emotional pay off, The Black Feathers is a wonderful way to spend a dark autumn evening

Chilling, haunting and incredibly moving

The perfect book for a cold winter’s night...an immersive gothic tale, dark and mysterious, in which it seems one must fear the living as much as the dead. Truly haunting!

Looking for an atmospheric read to while away the autumn nights? Set in a big house on the Yorkshire Moors, this Gothic ghost story delivers intrigue and suspense in spades

Atcmospheric, ghostly and gripping. A gothic tale of magic and wickedness

The Black Feathers is such a glorious autumnal read. With echoes of Wuthering Heights and Rebecca, it is both a spine-tingling ghost story and a powerful meditation on grief. A beautifully written tale that gripped me from the very first page.

A rich and rhythmic story... Fire Rush is a startlingly good debut

A wonderfully literary, musical and original novel about a culture and era that rarely makes the pages of fiction… Crooks writes with depth and maturity

Ambitious, atmospheric... This is a full-blooded novel of passion and anger with a deep, bassy resonance

Fire Rush is a lyrical debut powered by uncompromising political force

A startling debut novel... Jacqueline Crooks has crafted a richly textured world... She succeeds with great aplomb

Penetrates a subculture that we are unused to seeing represented in British fiction, depicting it in all its messy, exuberant complexity

Fire Rush is a book with the power to fill and break your heart... One of the strongest debuts of the year

An eye-opening, jaw-dropping story

An immersive debut... This is a triumph

Jacqueline Crooks' lyrical debut dances to the rhythm of the reggae music that pulses throughout it, in a powerful portrait of black womanhood

Incantatory

Exhilarating . . . An adroit novel of ethics

'Lyrical, piercing . . . The New Life is a fine-cut gem, its sentences buffed to a gleam . . . [Crewe's book] brims with élan and feeling, an ode to eros and a lost world, and a warning about the dangers ahead'

'Crewe deserves applause for his vivid scene-setting . . . There's much to admire in this meticulously researched, boldly envisioned debut'

'Nothing less than remarkable . . . A beautiful, brave book that reminds us of the terrible human cost of bigotry; this is a novel against forgetting'

'Rich and engrossing . . . blending the graceful ambiguity of literary fiction with the deftness of a page-turner . . . A smart, sensual debut'

A few established novelists continue to write first-class literary fiction on LGBTQ themes... The debut novel by Tom Crewe...reveals a new talent in the field. It is underpinned by extensive research... [with] a great story at its heart.

The New Life drives with a satisfying pace and a pleasing sense of both conclusion and open endings... how impressive it is that Crewe has synthesised a coherent and compelling fiction from his elements

Superb . . . Remarkably sensuous and intimate

Crewe demonstrates rare promise in this beautifully crafted story about two real-life pioneers who tried to make a case for homosexuality in Victorian Britain... Crewe brings this era pungently to life

[An] incredibly assured debut... A fresh take on the historical novel, with desire at its heart, written with a charged certainty that the personal is political

A rich, panoramic novel stuffed with vivid characters, heartaches and hazards... [a] brilliant debut

Crewe's beautiful novel is filled with nuance and forensic insight into love. Deftly recreating the atmosphere of 1890s London, The New Life is a tour de force of intelligent and empathetic fiction

A debut of impressive skill... Crewe is a trained historian and it shows: the period detail is exquisite

The novel is full of exquisitely drawn detail, right from the opening scene, making the moral and social dilemmas at the centre of the story dynamic and compelling

[A] pitch-perfect debut novel

Sometimes there comes along a debut novel that feels like an immediate classic. Tom Crewe’s The New Life is just such a book. It’s a beautifully crafted, seductive story about illicit desires in Victorian London