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Books to get you in the mood for Christmas

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The Girls by Emma Cline

Features

Designing The Girls

‘The tension never wavers’ (GUARDIAN)

The Guest

*A FINANCIAL TIMES Best Book of 2023 * A NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year 2023 * A TIMES 'Book of 2023' * 'Addictive' STYLIST Books to Look Out For 2023 * 'Destined to be the status read of 2023' HARPER'S BAZAAR BEST NEW FICTION * 
 
Summer is coming to a close on Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome... 
 
One misstep at a dinner party and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources, but a gift for navigating the desires of others, Alex stays on the island. She drifts like a ghost through the gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world, trailing destruction in her wake. 
 
Taut, sensual and impossible to look away from, The Guest captures the latent heat and potential danger of a summer that could go either way for a young woman teetering on the edge. 
 
PRAISE FOR EMMA CLINE 
 
'Taut, beautiful and savage' GUARDIAN 
 
'Stunning . . . thrilling . . . a spectacular achievement' THE TIMES 
 
'Something about Cline's intimate tone, her talent for conjuring the feeling of being alive, is entirely and uniquely her own' RACHEL KUSHNER 
 
'An astonishingly gifted stylist' BRANDON TAYLOR

Sultry and engrossing, with a note of menace, it's a gorgeously smart affair whose deceptive lightness conceals strange depths and an arresting originality . . . take it to the beach and savour every page

Drawing the reader inexorably on to the heightened, rug-pulling denouement, this is beach reading at its finest

Every sentence as sharp as a scalpel . . . tantalizing

At once chilling and eminently evocative of the rarefied world it portrays . . . a definite contender for Status Vacation Book of 2023

The ideal mix of hazy summer glamour and shimmering threat for compulsive beach reading... A gripping, almost ghastly book

Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATION

The Guest is everything I look for in a novel: cool, subtle, clinical

Nicole Flattery, author of NOTHING SPECIAL

The Girls was exceptional; The Guest, with its exquisite pacing and deliciously muddled moral compass, is even better

A thrilling dissection of survival and how far its protagonist will (or can) go to achieve it

Atmospheric and at times incandescent

Cline's writing at its very best - hypnotically propulsive, viscerally disquieting, and moving in the most unpredictable ways

The tension never wavers . . . This is rich material for Cline, who trains a chilly eye on the preposterous affluence and exclusivity of that part of the world

The Girls was exceptional; The Guest...is even better... Compulsively readable... The Guest is as refreshing as a dip in a cool pool on a hot day

The Guest... cements Cline's place as one of America's great contemporary stylists

As bracing as saltwater... Cline possesses unmistakable talent; her bursts of genuine originality and startling insight make that clear

A tale of the ultimate grifter. Doused in ambiguity and foreboding

This unsettling but gripping novel takes us deep into the mind of a woman living a shadowy half-life

Crucial reading for any young woman

Undeniably compelling and atmospheric... a poolside-worthy page-turner

A taut, tense novel... The Guest is a strong follow-up... Her [Cline's] prose is limpid and propulsive, sustaining an atmosphere of dread.

Cline has a crime writer's gift for revelatory storytelling, ramping up tension like an HBO pro

A searing portrayal of the precariat? Or a slick summer thriller? The answer is: both . . . you won't be able to look away

A dream-like, foreboding novel and worthy follow-up to the sensation The Girls

The talented Ms. Cline . . . Her prose is drifty and wire-taut, easy on the eye, with an awful undertow of unease that never lets up. The pathology brilliantly observed by The Guest would not feel so edgy if it were not perilously close to an aspirational ideal

I loved every moment of The Guest: the intensity, the control, the atmosphere, the psychological escalation, the astonishing social observation, the profound and devastating visions of the void achieved with flicks of the wrist, the way it lets nobody off the hook and yet is not without deep humanity

Heady scent of hotsummers and dark secrets

The wealthy clique depicted in Cline's unsettling second novel is by turns boorish and menacing - but you won't be able to look away

[The Guest’s] atmosphere is equally apprehensive [as The Girls] and Cline’s eye for the fragility of insider-outsiders is as gimlet-sharp as before

The Guest… [is] as relentlessly spellbinding as her debut

Emma Cline is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline's stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review and The Best American Short Stories. She received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review and an O'Henry Award, and was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.

Daddy

'Taut, beautiful and savage' Guardian 
 
A man travels to his son's school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? 
 
A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she's playing. 
 
And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father. 
 
 Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories from the best-selling author of The Girls are unforgettable. 
______________________ 
 
PRAISE FOR DADDY: 
'It is her piercing understanding of modern humiliation that makes these stories vibrate with life...brilliant' Brandon Taylor 
'Razor-sharp' Evening Standard 
'Cline's talent at uncovering the seedy and somehow bringing it to beautiful light is brilliant' Daisy Johnson 
'Something about Cline's intimate tone, her talent for conjuring the feeling of being alive, is entirely and uniquely her own' Rachel Kushner 
'A stunning collection of stories that plunges deep into the dark corners of the human experience' Dazed

The stories in Emma Cline's stunning first collection consider the dark corners of human experience, exploring the fault lines of power between men and women, parents and children, past and present.

Cline is an astonishingly gifted stylist, but it is her piercing understanding of modern humiliation that makes these stories vibrate with life...brilliant

Fans of Cline will delight in the author's razor-sharp observations and penchant for storytelling

Cline is particularly good at locking in the witty detail that speaks volumes... These expertly constructed stories withhold key information... the pleasures here lie in an appreciation of Cline's skilful and absorbing craft

These stories live in the odd corners of the world, Cline's talent at uncovering the seedy and somehow bringing it to beautiful light is brilliant. These are understated gems

When I read Emma Cline I think of Mary Gaitskill's psychological acuity and of Joy Williams's sardonic gravitas. And yet something about Cline's intimate tone, her talent for conjuring the feeling of being alive, is entirely and uniquely her own

Cline is...adept at swirling little eddies of unease into motion... [In Daddy] the undercurrents of the unspoken, the unspeakable, carry you along

Cline's approach is cool and crisp...  there's a suggestive queasiness to these bleak, well-crafted tales

Crackles with the darkness inherent in everyday relationships. Examining everything from masculinity, male power and the small misunderstandings that can have life-changing consequences

Daddy is a stunning collection of stories that plunges deep into the dark corners of the human experience

Emma Cline

‘Take it to the beach and savour every page’ Observer

VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES 
Spine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. 
 
A gripping and dark fictionalised account of life inside the Manson family from one of the most exciting young voices in fiction. 
 
If you're lost, they'll find you... 
 
Evie Boyd is fourteen and desperate to be noticed. 
 
It's the summer of 1969 and restless, empty days stretch ahead of her. Until she sees them. The girls. Hair long and uncombed, jewelry catching the sun. And at their centre, Suzanne, black-haired and beautiful. 
 
If not for Suzanne, she might not have gone. But, intoxicated by her and the life she promises, Evie follows the girls back to the decaying ranch where they live. 
 
Was there a warning? A sign of what was coming? Or did Evie know already that there was no way back? 
 
'Taut, beautiful and savage, Cline's novel demands your attention' Guardian

Emma Cline

The Girls

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