Serious literary fun as Mark Hodder vaults to the front of the new steampunk writers pack. Elaborately researched and name-checked, THE SECRET OF ABDU EL YEZDI races Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton through a diabolically baffling maze of historical possiblities -- plus there's corsets and airships. Hard to imagine any lover of alternate British empires not being thoroughly amazed and entertained

Great fun, thought-provoking, highly literate and beautifully written

Wondrous... Expertly chilling... Wyld consistently entertains, juggling the pleasures of several different genres.

Searingly controlled…psychologically fearless and…bitterly funny. Wyld is a genius of contrasting voices and revealed connections, while her foreshadowings are so subtle that the book demands – and eminently repays – a second read.

A rising star of British fiction… Wyld’s slow, controlled build-up of dread is excellent… Most powerful of all is Wyld’s evocation of a hairs-on-the-neck sense of foreboding when women interact with volatile men.

Powerful, intensely absorbing… Wyld is as gifted as Phoebe Waller-Bridge at capturing the hilarious, the excruciating and the absurd.

Evie Wyld’s tremendous new novel, The Bass Rock, is a powerful and beautifully written narrative of male violence and the three women who endured it.

[A] menacing, modern-Gothic novel... Balancing a superbly controlled sense of dread with fierce anger, Wyld's intense novel is one that will get under your skin and stay there.

Evie Wyld is the author of two excellent novels but she moves up a gear with her third… Wyld’s superbly written…stories mirror and haunt each other in shockingly satisfying ways… Each of these separately lonely women are startlingly well drawn, yet the threads running through their lives are universal… The Bass Rock deserves to win prizes.

Evie Wyld's third novel The Bass Rock was...not to be missed, it's as good as her first two excellent novels.

A blazingly angry, darkly witty tour de force... Bracing, and as ever, beautifully written.

An implacable witness to centuries of violence… this [is a] spikily beautiful novel.

Wyld is unhesitatingly brave in her writing… She has an instinctive understanding of the interchangeability between humans and nature that can border, thrillingly, on animism… Wyld’s delineation of the era is cut-glass perfect… Her prose shines, even as it devours.

[A] menacing, modern-Gothic novel…Balancing a superbly controlled sense of dread with fierce anger, Wyld’s intense novel is one that will get under your skin and stay there.

[An] unsettling new novel about toxic masculinity… Wyld’s gossamer-light prose, beautiful even in its depiction of murder, brings nuance and complexity to the story… Wyld’s skilfully woven narrative will keep you turning towards a final, unexpected twist.

Quite remarkable… This book is equally ingenious [as her previous novels], if not more so… With each novel, Wyld gets better and better… A serious, serious writer.

Powerful… unsettling… humorous and full of sharply observed vignettes.

The Bass Rock is a gripping, moving insight into the age-old issue of toxic masculinity and the sixth sense that women have evolved to keep them safe.

Evie Wyld’s powerful new novel…[is] a feminine counterforce to the masculine violence that pulses viscerally throughout… No wonder Wyld’s rage erupts from the page as she bears witness to the women who fail to survive and searches for ways that others might.

Evie Wyld is one of our most exciting young writers and her latest book is being touted as her breakthrough. An epic novel.

Evie Wyld…[is] one of our most distinctive and vital voices.

Wyld is the most stupendous of writers, daring, heartfelt, explosive. The Bass Rock reminds us of all her power and brilliance, it thrums with an anger it is impossible not to feel.

The Bass Rock is a multi-generational modern gothic triumph. It is spectacularly well-observed, profoundly disquieting and utterly riveting. Like all Evie Wyld's work it is startlingly insightful about psychological and physical abuse. It is a haunting, masterful novel.

A brutal portrait of male violence, as unchanging down the centuries as the coastal rock of the title… Cleverly constructed, full of electric scene-making, and harnessing an eerie energy…the novel ends in hope.

Everything [Evie Wyld] has published has left me excited and slightly (very) envious of her ability… And then came The Bass Rock… Something extremely special… The book takes on an immense power. This is the best book of the #MeToo era… An absolute blinder.

Vividly told and compelling… The Bass Rock is…beautifully written and powered by blistering force and righteous anger.

Evie Wyld is exceptionally good at the gruesome… Her bewitching third novel…The Bass Rock is beautifully written and its particular brand of macabre is all Evie Wyld’s own. The tension, foreboding and sense of inevitability are hard to shake off, even once the final page is turned. Its atmosphere is so powerful that you feel you need to go for a walk afterwards.

A dark, gristly marvel of a novel. The Bass Rock held me in thrall from cover to cover. Evie Wyld is a gothic genius: her narrative of the violence inflicted on women throughout the centuries and the seething, female anger left in its wake left me with a deep sense of disquiet that will doubtless remain for years to come.

A fierce novel exploring the subjugation of – and violence against – women through the ages.

I savoured this wonderful novel; it is so extraordinarily clear-eyed and vivid, sharply disturbing yet deeply compassionate. What an amazing achievement.

Wonderfully subtle and magnificently savage.

Evie Wyld's vivid, visceral writing has long been in a class of its own – and as beautiful as it is terrifying, as moral as it is furious, The Bass Rock is her at her unflinching best.

Amazingly good. The Bass Rock will fill the air around you with angry ghosts and you will be glad in their company.

Wyld’s The Bass Rock is her third novel and best so far… this is Wyld’s masterpiece – as majestic and monumental as the landmark it’s named after.

A bewitching and atmospheric novel, laced with dread. It reveals the haunted house of society, with its echoes of damaged and extinguished lives, but is also illuminated by beautiful observation about people, and their capacity for both violence and empathy.

I loved The Bass Rock and found it menacing, sophisticated, magical and also very funny – the best book yet by a wonderful writer.

Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock sounds fascinating… Wyld has a luminous prose style, and to see how she copes with 300 years and Scottish doubleness (or tripleness) is high on my list of “to reads”.

Beautifully written, [The Bass Rock] is a reminder of female folklore and the power of giving words to women.

Ambitious in scope… The physical atmosphere of the Bass Rock and its surroundings are wonderfully evoked… But it is the relationships between women in this tessellated work that triumph... I wholly recommend this book.

Wyld is often praised for her lyrical prose, and The Bass Rock is most certainly a continuation of this form.

[A] dark, beautiful and funny gothic family saga for the #MeToo generation… an atmospheric book that transports you within a few sentences… The tension is always building as the story takes on an otherworldly dimension.

The Bass Rock is complex, rich, challenging… Like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, The Bass Rock offers a universal history of subjugation and oppression… Violence…runs through the book like veins in marble… Vivid and gripping.

A gripping look at three women's stories across four centuries.

Evie Wyld’s passion for horror shines through in the setting of this novel.

Utterly enthralling… [Wyld’s] eye for human foibles and idiosyncrasy is incredibly sharp, and this novel once again exhibits her bravura way with narrative structure… Dark, disturbing and very sophisticated.

[An] intensely absorbing gothic novel, which weaves together the fate of three women across three centuries. That it can also comfortably accommodate episodes of off-the-wall, Fleabag-esque hilarity confirms the acclaimed Wyld's brilliance.

Wyld's thought-provoking plots separate this book from many others on the shelves... Wyld's three narratives are artfully crafted to suit the shifting time frames.

Wyld's ingeniously linked narratives weave a haunting tale of fear and defiance.

A novel of such subtlety and hope