Human Croquet
Play sample
  • Published: 18 August 2020
  • ISBN: 9780552996198
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $22.99

Human Croquet

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Aug 2020
EBook
1 May 2010
Audiobook
20 Nov 2014
Audiobook
7 Jan 2010
Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Boomerang Find local retailers Find local retailers Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

The brilliant and profound second novel from the three-times Costa prizewinner and number one bestseller Kate Atkinson.

The brilliant and profound second novel from the three-times Costa prizewinner and number one bestseller Kate Atkinson.

'Vivid, richly imaginative, hilarious and frightening by turns' Observer
Once it had been the great forest of Lythe. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor.

But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed, replaced by Streets of Trees. The Fairfaxes have dwindled too; now they live in 'Arden' at the end of Hawthorne Close and are hardly a family at all.

But Isobel Fairfax, who drops into pockets of time and out again, knows about the past. She is sixteen and waiting for the return of her mother - the thin, dangerous Eliza with her scent of nicotine, Arpège and sex, whose disappearance is part of the mystery that still remains at the heart of the forest.
  • Published: 18 August 2020
  • ISBN: 9780552996198
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

About the author

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is one of the world’s foremost novelists. She won the Costa Book of the Year prize with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her three critically lauded and prizewinning novels set around World War II are Life After Life, A God in Ruins (both winners of the Costa Novel Award), and Transcription. She was appointed MBE for services to literature in 2011.

Her bestselling literary crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie, Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News? and Started Early, Took My Dog became a BBC television series starring Jason Isaacs. Jackson Brodie returns in her new novel Big Sky.

portrait photo of Kate Atkinson

Also by Kate Atkinson

Death at the Sign of the Rook
When Will There Be Good News?
Case Histories
Life After Life
One Good Turn
Started Early, Took My Dog
Normal Rules Don't Apply
See all

Praise for Human Croquet

Vivid, richly imaginative, hilarious and frightening by turns

Observer

Huge, exhilarating, loving and detailed eruption of a novel...an utterly intoxicating display of novelistic elan...big and joyous, literary and accessible...storytelling at its buoyant best

The Scotsman

Wonderfully eloquent and forceful Kate Atkinson goes at the same pace in her second novel as she did in her first...welcome back, wild north-easter...brilliant and engrossing

Evening Standard

Vivid and intriguing...fizzles and crackles along...a tour de force

Independent

Part ghost story, part murder mystery, this is an exquisitely written, literary novel that reads as compellingly as any thriller

Cosmopolitan

A stunner of a second novel...a gutsy book, wrenched from the heart and written with tremendous force, immersing you in its strange, eccentric world

Marie Claire

The quirky imagination, subversive humour and instinct for domestic chaos that Atkinson displayed in her first novel...are rampantly evident again

Publishers Weekly
penguin pop image
penguin pop image