Crushed

(, Export - Airside ed)

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Description

Phoebe stands on Pultenay Bridge trying to cover her face with her hair so she won't be recognized. Her tights are gashed from toe to thigh. She has lost a shoe. People keep looking.

Was it five, or ten minutes later she heard the commotion Phoebe ran down the road until she saw. Mangled metal. Blood ran down the walls.

Phoebe believes this was of her making. She thought murder, and murder happened. She had told them her thoughts weren't just thoughts and now she must live with the consequences. Phoebe won't miss any more signs.

Who will be next to suffer Phoebe directs her ire at her mother, scissors and knives all covertly pointing in her direction, but there are others to whom she is inexorably bound, her best friends Grace and Orla, and then there's Mr Jonasson. Any of them might find themselves caught in the crossfire. For Phoebe is many things, but she is not in control.

Reviews

"Kate Hamer's gripping debut novel immediately recalls the explosion of similarly titled books and movies, from Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels, to The Girl on the Train to Gone Girl ... "--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Keeps the reader turning pages at a frantic clip... What's most powerful here is not whodunnit, or even why, but how this mother and daughter bear their separation, and the stories they tell themselves to help endure it." --Celeste Ng (author of Little Fires Everywhere)

"Compulsively readable...Beautifully written and unpredictable, I had to stop myself racing to the end to find out what happened." --Rosamund Lupton (Sister)

"Both gripping and sensitive -- beautifully written, it is a compulsive, aching story full of loss and redemption." --Lisa Ballantyne (/i>The Guilty One)

"Hamer's dark tale of the lost and found is nearly impossible to put down." --Booklist

Author Bio

Kate Hamer grew up in the West Country and Wales. She studied art and worked for a number of years in television. In 2011 she won the Rhys Davies short-story prize and her short stories have appeared in various collections. Her debut novel The Girl in the Red Coat was published in 2015. It was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize, the British Book Industry Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, and the Wales Book of the Year. It was followed by the acclaimed The Doll Funeral in 2017. Kate now lives with her husband in Cardiff.