Little Bones

The breakthrough novel from acclaimed writer Janette Jenkins - a dark tale from Victorian London, of ghosts, the clang of prison gates, and what goes on behind closed doors...

One of the best storytellers at work today

Jenkins writes with verve and colour, vividly bringing to life the dingy London streets... An entertainment as brilliant as the tinselly world of music hall at its heart

Compelling...a fine novel: the best kind of historical fiction.

Jenkins  has perfectly encapsulated the dark, seedy streets of Victorian London,  so anybody who enjoys reading fiction set in this period will not be  disappointed

A compelling and darkly humourous portrait of a lost, misshapen girl who suddenly finds herself centre-stage

Born in Bolton in 1965, Janette Jenkins studied acting before completing a degree in Literature and Philosophy and then doing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she was in Malcolm Bradbury's final class, along with Toby Litt, John Boyne, Richard Beard and Bo Fowler. She is the author of the novels, Columbus Day, Another Elvis Love Child and Angel of Brooklyn. Her short stories have appeared in newspapers and anthologies, including Stand Magazine, and have been broadcast on Radio 4. In 2003 she was awarded an Alumni Fellowship by the University of Bolton. She lives in the city of Durham.

It's 1899 and a young girl is abandoned in London by her feckless family. She finds lodging and work assisting a doctor. But Jane Stretch is no ordinary girl, and Mr Swift is no ordinary doctor. 
 
Jane does her best to keep up with the doctor, her twisted bones throbbing, as they hurry past the markets, stage doors and side shows to appointments in certain boarding houses across town. The young actresses who live there have problems, and Mr Swift does what is required, calmly and discreetly. Grateful to her benefactor and his wife, Jane assists him and asks no questions - the desperate women not minding that it is a cripple girl who wipes their brows. 
 
When this unlikely pair becomes involved with Johnny Treble, a rakish music hall star, and the police come knocking, it seems that Jane's spell of good fortune is unlikely to last...

Angel of Brooklyn

Acclaimed writer Janette Jenkins brings us an ambitious and tragic tale of love and war, which shows the past can never be forgotten...

Jenkins' third novel is set in two real places... but is about the ways in which we imagine the world

Jenkins' tender narrative voice is well suited to a heroine still innocent enough to see the good in people... It's a tall order to mix American Gothic with gritty Northern realism, but Jenkins likes to keep herself and her readers entertained... This invigorating novel bottles the seasonal delights of both Coney and Morecambe Bay

Lighthearted and confident, a bouncy, enjoyable read

John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Jenkins's novel is well-written, elegantly constructed...the arresting opening and skilful characterisation demonstrate Jenkins's strengths as a writer, along with her powerful evocation of place

Angel of Brooklyn is a delightfully illustrative novel about a homesick new bride with a big secret. It is charming and tender in equal measure and Jenkins tells the story of her heroine with a beguiling innocence that captures your imagination from the beginning

Born in Bolton in 1965, Janette Jenkins studied acting before completing a degree in Literature and Philosophy and then doing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she was in Malcolm Bradbury's final class. She is the author of the novels, Columbus Day, Another Elvis Love Child, Little Bones and Firefly. Her short stories have appeared in newspapers and anthologies, including Stand Magazine, and have been broadcast on Radio 4. In 2003 she was awarded an Alumni Fellowship by the University of Bolton. She lives in the city of Durham.

It is January, 1914 and Jonathan Crane returns home from his travels with a new American bride, former Coney Island showgirl Beatrice. In the remote Lancashire village Beatrice is the focus of attention, the men captivated by her beauty, the women initially charmed by tales of her upbringing in Normal, Illinois with her father, an amateur taxidermist, and her brother, a preacher, although she will take the story of how she became the Angel of Brooklyn to her grave. 
 
But when the men head off to fight in the Great War the glamorous newcomer slowly becomes an object of suspicion and jealousy for the women who are left behind and as the years pass, and their resentment grows, Beatrice's secret proves to be her undoing. 
 
Beautifully observed, tragic, funny and so evocative that you can taste the candy floss at Coney Island and feel the chill of wartime England, Angel of Brooklyn is an extraordinary, heartbreaking story.

Janette Jenkins

Beautiful... This moving novel pays tribute to a great talent as the curtain comes down, in prose that lingers like the echo of a good bay-side martini

What a lovely, clever book! Beautiful, wistful, just right

This elegant novel imagines the final weeks of Noel Coward after he has retired…Jenkins’ Coward is clever and cantankerous to the end

Quietly witty and remarkable in portraying the slipping away of mind and body that comes with old age

Firefly shimmers with all the passion and transcience of life

Jenkins shows she has a gift for tender comedy

I can think of no better companion than Janette Jenkins' pitch-perfect reimagining of a regret-tinged twilight of Noel Coward's life

A study in melancholy, very well observed

Perfectly-tuned imagining… Jenkins’ telling of it...saves it from any hint of predictability

Jenkins’s prose is thoughtful and sensitive…and her depiction of Coward’s final stage performance, which was a disaster, is particularly insightful

On a secluded hillside in Jamaica lies Firefly, Noël Coward’s peaceful retreat. Here, between sundowners and sunsets, brandies and cigarettes, the seventy-one-year-old Coward whiles away his days – a comforting, frustrating pattern of unwanted breakfasts, reluctant walks, graceless dips in the pool – in the company of his manservant Patrice. 
 
Both of them dream of a London that is long-gone or imagined: Noël’s peopled with glamorous friends – Redgrave, Olivier, O’Toole – and Patrice’s a picture-postcard vision of elegance and opportunity. Set over a series of summer days in the early 1970s, Firefly flits through Coward’s dreams and memories, his successes and regrets, against a sultry, seductive backdrop of blue skies and glistening water. 
 
'A delightful read' 
Ian McKellen

Janette Jenkins

Praise for Firefly

Beautiful... This moving novel pays tribute to a great talent as the curtain comes down, in prose that lingers like the echo of a good bay-side martini

What a lovely, clever book! Beautiful, wistful, just right

Perfectly formed

Beautiful... This moving novel pays tribute to a great talent as the curtain comes down, in prose that lingers like the echo of a good bay-side martini

What a lovely, clever book! Beautiful, wistful, just right

Perfectly formed

Beautiful... This moving novel pays tribute to a great talent as the curtain comes down, in prose that lingers like the echo of a good bay-side martini

What a lovely, clever book! Beautiful, wistful, just right

Perfectly formed

Books by Janette Jenkins

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter