Other Women

Zoe Ball's BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick.Mesmerising and huanting, Emma Flint's Other Women is a devastating story of fantasy, obsession inspired by a murder that took place almost a hundred years ago.'A pitch-perfect historical mystery' – The Guardian'Bloody brilliant' – Dinah Jefferies, author of The Missing Sister'Compelling, twisty, and wonderfully suspenseful' – Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled GroundIt is 1923 and a country is in mourning. Thousands of husbands, fathers, sons and sweethearts were lost in the war, millions more returned home wounded and forever changed.Beatrice Cade is an orphan, unmarried and childless. After her brother's death, she decides to make a new life for herself. She takes a room in a Bloomsbury ladies’ club and a job in the City. But just when her new world is starting to take shape, a fleeting encounter threatens to ruin everything.Kate Ryan is an ordinary wife and mother. Since the end of the war, she has managed to build an enviable life with her husband and young daughter. From the outside, they seem like a normal, happy family. But when two policemen knock on Kate's door and jeopardize the facade Kate has created, she knows what she has to do to protect the people she loves. And suddenly, two women who never should have met are connected for ever . . .'Exquisite' - Will Dean, author of Dark Pines'This is a book that will stay with you' – Ann Cleeves, bestselling author of the Vera series'A thoroughly captivating and unsettling page-turner' iNews

The tension grows throughout the book until it's almost unbearable. This is a book that will stay with you., It’s been six years since Flint’s debut novel, the compelling Little Deaths, but Other Women is certainly worth the wait. Like its predecessor, this beautifully written, pitch-perfect historical mystery is based on a real case – here, a murder that took place in 1924 . . . a moving study of loneliness, desperation, shame and public prurience., Exquisite and my book of the year. Utterly brilliant., [Flint] builds a world that feels utterly authentic, filled with real people struggling to adapt to a social order in flux . . . she writes of a society all too ready to think the worst of a single woman . . . Flint maintains suspense in what is a thoroughly captivating and unsettling page-turner that deserves to land her on awards lists again., Emma Flint reworks the details of a notorious historical murder and unspools the fate of her three entirely convincing main characters.

Emma Flint was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne. She graduated from the University of St Andrews with an MA in English Language and Literature, and later completed a novel-writing course at the Faber Academy. She lives and works in London.Since childhood, she has been drawn to true-crime stories, developing an encyclopaedic knowledge of real-life murder cases from the early twentieth century. Her first novel, Little Deaths, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, for the Desmond Elliott Prize, for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award, and for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize.Other Women is her second novel.