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  • Published: 28 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9780552774789
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

Crooked Heart

‘My book of the year’ Jojo Moyes




From the bestselling author of Old Baggage, longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, 2015.

When Noel Bostock - aged ten, no family - is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he winds up in St Albans with Vera Sedge - thiry-six, drowning in debts. Always desperate for money, she's unscrupulous about how she gets it.

The war's thrown up all manner of new opportunities but what Vee needs is a cool head and the ability to make a plan. On her own, she's a disaster. With Noel, she's a team.

Together they cook up an idea. But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn't actually safe at all . . .

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, 2015

  • Published: 28 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9780552774789
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

About the author

Lissa Evans

Lissa Evans has written books for both adults and children, including Their Finest Hour and a Half, longlisted for the Orange Prize, Small Change for Stuart, shortlisted for many awards including the Carnegie Medal and the Costa Book Awards and Crooked Heart, longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Also by Lissa Evans

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Praise for Crooked Heart

Wonderfully vivid and eccentric...there's a good dash of sharp comedy to offset the heart-warming stuff

Kate Saunders, The Times

Unmissable...Why is Lissa Evans not one of our best-known and best-loved authors?...The great joy of Lissa Evans’s writing lies in her spirited, quirky characters and, as befits a former producer of Father Ted and director of Have I Got News For You, a devilish wit

Sunday Express

Dazzling...a miniature masterpiece of serio-comic writing...A dark comedy, moving between drollery, pathos, farce and harrowing moments of tragic insight

Guardian

I loved this book - Lissa Evans is a wonderful writer; Vee and Noel are utter originals, and their journey made me laugh and cry

JoJo Moyes

At Christmas you need a book that's going to make you want to curl up in an armchair while it's raining outside and that book is Crooked Heart. It is funny and warm and so insightful and moving. An instant classic

India Knight, Sainsburys Magazine

Evans has a delightful tone, airy and bouncy, but with a perceptive irony and a spattering of caustic details. It recalls carefully constructed, deceptively light comic novels by the likes of Stella Gibbons and Nancy Mitford...And while the horror of war is tilted at, it's also often a source of laughter in the dark. It's a refreshingly crisp approach that allows moments of genuine pathos to be all the more resonant

Holly Williams, Independent on Sunday

A joy from start to finish: briskly paced, taut and snappy with humor and, ultimately, sweet

Katherine Powers, Minneapolis Herald Tribune

A wonderfully Dickensian novel with satisfying plot twists that invoke the flavour (and scams) of wartime London . . . Evans has created a story both darkly funny and deeply touching, it’s a crooked journey straight to the heart

Judith Newman, New York Times Book Review

A gloriously atmospheric tale of life on the home front among spivs and charlatans

Cathy Renzenbrink, Prima

Prepare to be charmed, amused and moved . . . A complete delight

January Book Club Pick, Mail on Sunday

Lissa Evans writes with tremendous wit as well as sensitivity, creating memorable characters with hearts of gold

Daily Express

A fabulous novel about the relationship between ten-year-old Noel and his unscrupulous but endearing foster mother, Vee Sedge

January Book Club Pick, Woman & Home