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  • Published: 31 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9781448183609
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

Breakfast with the Borgias




'Hell is other people' A chilling, page-turning Hammer novella by the Booker-Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little.

'Hell is other people.' A chilling, page-turning Hammer novella by the Booker-Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little.

The setting: a faded, lonely guesthouse on the Essex coast. Outside, it's dark, and very foggy. Inside there's no phone or internet reception, no connection with the outside world.

Enter Ariel Panek, a promising young academic en route from the USA to an important convention in Amsterdam. With his plane grounded by fog at Stanstead, he has been booked in for the night at the guesthouse. Discombobulated and jetlagged, he falls in with a family who appear to be commemorating an event.

But this is no ordinary celebration. And this is no ordinary family.

As evening becomes night, Panek realises that he has become caught in an insidious web of other people's secrets and lies, a Sartrian hell from which for him there may be no escape.

  • Published: 31 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9781448183609
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 256

About the author

DBC Pierre

DBC Pierre has worked as a designer and cartoonist, and currently lives in Ireland. His first novel, Vernon God Little, won the 2003 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award, the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, and the 2003 Man Booker Prize, and is sold in 43 countries.

His relationship with Hammer stretches back to earliest childhood. He describes never having been so chilled and intrigued as with the supernatural Hammer films he grew up with. Their effect was so great that he spent many schooldays drawing replica storyboards on cash register rolls, and holding showings for classmates on a shoebox cinema.

Praise for Breakfast with the Borgias

Beautifully written, creepy and funny ... A fascinating, occasionally chilling tale

The List

Chillingly discomforting ... Pierre has one of the sharpest minds in contemporary literature and there isn't a sentence wasted

Hot Press

A thoroughly modern nightmare … DBC Pierre stacks up the layers of horror with relish and skill – the Hammer label gives him a perfect excuse to leave no stop unpulled

The Times

Winningly peculiar

Independent

Pierre lets his baroque storytelling powers run riot in this latest addition to the excellent Hammer series … exerts an uncanny, bone-chilling thrill

Metro

Pierre’s prose is a sumptuous, metaphor-infused confection … Quirky characters and off-the-wall observations about modern life’s obsession with electronic communication keep the book constantly entertaining.

SFX

Pierre’s insights into human nature elevate this way above most psychological thrillers. It’s well-paced, with a cast of large-as-life characters and a structure that makes more than the odd nod towards Agatha Christie. As the tension builds to the final chaotic spiral of revelations, it becomes apparent this is a novel crying out for a full-blooded stage adaptation. It’s the least it deserves.

Event Magazine, Mail on Sunday

His distinctive style fits the atmosphere of Gothic horror… appropriately nightmarish

Evening Standard

A weird and spooky tale… Pierre writes with his usual style ... a great deal of tension and an even greater deal of imagination … a smart modern take on scary stuff

Sunday Sport