Penance Signed Independent Bookshop Edition

An utterly chilling, compulsive story of a murder among teenagers, on the eve of the historic Brexit vote, by a major new voice in British fiction. A Guardian Best Book of the Year A Dazed Best Novel of 2023 'You've never read anything like this.' JULIA ARMFIELD Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes? Did you see the pictures of the body? Did you look for them? It’s been years since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being pub- lished for the first time. That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small sea- side town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec. Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the ‘definitive account’ of the mur- der – and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspon- dence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil. The only question is: how much of it is true?