Winchelsea

Alex Preston

Winchelsea by Alex Preston (Paperback ISBN 9781838854874) book cover

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AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4
A SPECTATOR BEST OF THE YEAR - AS CHOSEN BY REVIEWERS

In eighteenth-century Sussex, a young girl seeks revenge for the death of her father – an intoxicating historical novel from the acclaimed author of In Love and War

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4
A SPECTATOR BEST OF THE YEAR - AS CHOSEN BY REVIEWERS

The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. But when she turns sixteen, her father is murdered by men he thought were friends.

In a town where lawlessness prevails, Goody and her brother Francis must enter the cut-throat world of her father’s killers in order to find justice. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she discovers what life can be like without constraints or expectations, developing a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.

Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?


“Imagine Daphne du Maurier crossed with Quentin Tarantino, and you will have some idea of just what a thrilling, bloody and heady ride this novel is”
Tom Holland

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“I was riveted. Winchelsea is a great read – terrific narrative drive, credible characters, and such an elegant creation of the backdrop in terms of both time and place”
Penelope Lively

“Boisterous … evocative … What holds the novel together as much as its driving plot are its incantatory atmosphere and spellbinding language”
guardian

“Preston is a gifted prose cartographer, conjuring up the Sussex coastline in a crisp, clear fashion … He has written a bawdy, thunderous romp that echoes with cannon fire, sea shanties and the occasional plaintive cry of a nightjar”
financial Times

“Glorious”
spectator


Alex Preston

Alex Preston is an award-winning author of four novels: This Bleeding City, The Revelations, In Love and War and Winchelsea, as well as a book of non-fiction As Kingfishers Catch Fire. He writes regularly for the Telegraph, the Economist and Harper’s Bazaar. He reviews books for the Observer’s New Review, Financial Times and Spectator. Alex is co-founder of the Corfu Literary Festival and Patron of Oxford Literary Festival.

@ahmpreston


Winchelsea cover

Read more about the story of Goody Brown – an eighteenth century girl seeking revenge for the death of her father – in Winchelsea, an intoxicating historical novel by Alex Preston, the acclaimed author of In Love and War

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