Hodder Paperbacks
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
The new standalone from 'one of the great unmissables of the genre - intelligent, classy and with a wonderfully gothic imagination' [The Times] - with a disturbingly impossible situation.
***WINNER OF THE 2023 CWA DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY***
'Sophie Hannah, who can twist a conventional plot until it screams for mercy, puts an existential spin on the domestic-suspense novel' New York Times
'Fiendishly clever' Daily Mail
'Complex and sinister' Observer
'A literary high-wire artist' Sunday Express
'Prepare for sleep deprivation!' Red
All Beth has to do is drive her son to his Under-14s away match, watch him play, and bring him home.
Just because she knows that her former best friend lives near the football ground, that doesn't mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that, and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn't seen Flora Braid for twelve years.
But she can't resist. She parks outside Flora's house and watches from across the road as Flora and her children, Thomas and Emily, step out of the car. Except...
There's something terribly wrong.
Flora looks the same, only older - just as Beth would have expected. It's the children that are the problem. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily Braid were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then. They are still five and three. They are Thomas and Emily without a doubt - Beth hears Flora call them by their names - but they haven't changed at all.
They are no taller, no older.
Why haven't they grown?
Praise for HAVEN'T THEY GROWN - :
From the impossible premise to its chilling conclusion, Haven't They Grown is a masterpiece in plotting. Hannah's writing is darkly funny and brilliantly observed - I adore her books. - Clare Mackintosh
One of this country's most accomplished writers and one of the few who could pull off such an impossible sounding mystery . . . It is testament to Hannah's skill that she creates such a convincing narrative, cleverly manages the suspense and deals with so many contemporary themes. And she hasn't lost her knack for sending the reader in the wrong direction.
- Daily Mail
Hannah has always excelled at the knotty, impossible twist and Haven't They Grown is as complex and sinister as ever - The Observer, Thrillers of the Month review
Hannah is one of our most courageous crime writers, a literary high-wire artist who sets herself the toughest of challenges in inventing inexplicable mysteries that she must create plausible solutions for... she pulls it off beautifully - Sunday Express S Magazine
Hannah is becoming something of a national treasure... rich and nuanced - The Financial Times
SO clever, so gripping: Hannah asks her readers an impossible question and answers it with style. I tore through Haven't They Grown. Brilliant characters and a corker of an ending. Bravo! - Gillian McAllister
Ingenious... delivers twists and turns at every corner - Heat
Sophie Hannah is a Sunday Times, New York Times and Amazon Kindle No. 1 bestselling author whose books have sold millions of copies and are published in 51 countries. She was the first person to write and publish new Hercule Poirot mysteries, at the request of Agatha Christie's family and estate. In 2023 she won the Dagger in the Library Award, and in 2013 she won the UK National Book Awards Crime Novel of the Year prize for her novel The Carrier. Sophie is also an award-winning poet whose work is studied at GCSE level across the UK, and has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her murder mystery musical, The Mystery of Mr E, was released as a feature film in 2023. Sophie is the founder and coach at Dream Author Coaching, and her recent self-help book about how to make brilliant decisions, The Double Best Method, was an Amazon top ten bestseller. Sophie lives with her husband, grown-up children and dog in Cambridge, where she is an honorary fellow of Lucy Cavendish College.