Showing results by publisher "Mantle" in Genre Fiction

Sixteen year old Shelley and her mother move to Honeysuckle cottage in the middle of the countryside, fleeing their fears and anxieties and hoping to put behind them years of suffering at the hands of others. Shelley has endured terrible bullying from the girls who used to be her best friends, and her mother has been left reeling following a divorce from her selfish, demanding husband. For Shelley and her mother are ‘mice’ – timid, nervous and obliging. And for a while, in their cottage-haven, the women flourish.

When Juliette takes the métro to her loathed office job each morning, her only escape is in books - she avidly reads on her journey and imagines what her fellow commuters’ choices might say about them. But when, one day, she decides to alight the train a few stops early and meets Soliman - the mysterious owner of the most enchanting bookshop Juliette has ever seen - she is sure her life will never be the same again....

For Ruth, a new mother recovering from postpartum psychosis, every day is difficult and, after months spent hearing voices in the walls and trusting no one, she’s no longer confident in her own judgement. Neither, it seems, is anyone else. So, when she hears a scream from the local petrol station one night, she initially decides it must be her mind playing tricks again.

23-year-old Sirad Ali is a woman adrift. Abandoned by her father in childhood, she does her best to support her mother and younger brother in their small flat in South London. But she can’t help but wonder if this is the life she really wants. Until one morning, when she boards the bus to work in Greenwich, she finds herself transported to an alternate reality in present-day Mogadishu. There she encounters her double, Ubah – the woman she could have been had her parents never fled to London during the Somali Civil War.

Set in the fictional city of Maardam, each story is linked by themes of secrets coming to light, lies being exposed and pasts coming back to haunt the people who thought they had fled them - all told in Håkan Nesser’s signature style of dark, cutting prose that displays a true understanding of human nature. The collection is the basis for a trilogy of international films - Dear Agnes, Death of an Author and Samaria - directed by Daniel Alfredson and starring Ben Kingsley and Gemma Chan.