Helen Dunmore, author of the Orange Prize winning A Spell of Winter and Zennor in Darkness, weaves a tangled web of regrets, secrets, and blackmail in her thrilling novel Your Blue-Eyed Boy.

‘There are things you should know about blackmail. . .’

At thirty-eight Simone has responsibilities: she’s a district judge with two small boys and a husband on the verge of bankruptcy and breakdown. When she receives a letter postmarked New York she has no idea that opening it will threaten all she has worked for and call into question her judgement. For the photographs contained in the letter remind her of things she regrets from twenty years ago, and a man she’d decided to forget.

But blackmail, like the heart, never forgets. . .

‘A highly charged, haunting novel…beautifully wrought’ Elizabeth Buchan, The Times

‘Terrific’ Daily Telegraph

‘Excellently readable, genuinely disturbing’ Anita Brookner, Spectator

Novelist and poet Helen Dunmore has achieved great critical acclaim since publishing her first adult novel, the McKitterick Prize winning, Zennor in Darkness. Her novels, Counting the Stars, With Your Crooked Heart, Burning Bright, The Siege (Shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002), The Betrayal, A Spell of Winter, House of Orphans, Mourning Ruby and Talking to the Dead, and her collection of short stories Love of Fat Men are all published by Penguin. Helen also writes for children, her titles include The Deep and Ingo.

Download and read the prologue and opening chapters of Your Blue-Eyed Boy here