MARK HADDON: A LESSON LEARNT

LAUREN BEUKES' SHINING GIRLS The Arthur C. Clarke-winning author on her new novel What’s scarier than a psychopathic serial killer who can travel through time toying with victims at various points in their life? Not much if Lauren Beukes’ new thriller, The Shining Girls, is anything to go by. It's 1931, and in Depression-era Chicago, the violent Harper is living a hand-to-mouth existence in Hooverville, until he commits a murder and takes refuge in a mysterious house. It is in this strange house that he discovers both a portal to other times and visions of his “shining girls”, women from various decades who “shine” for him and become his murder victims – but only after he has visited them as children, teenagers and then as adults. With the ability to time-travel on his side Harper is the perfect, undetectable murderer– until one of his “shining girls” does the impossible... and survives.  MORE >  Via We Love This Book

MARK HADDON: A LESSON LEARNT Mark Haddon recalls an unpleasant incident at boarding school "I was sent away to boarding school in 1974, and one Sunday evening during my third term, in that precious hour of free time between house prayers and lights out, I found myself in the games room with the other boys in my year, doing what 12-year-old boys have always done in games rooms pretty much since we came down out of the trees: seeing who could balance a snooker cue on the tip of their finger, who could fit a billiard ball in their mouth, who could hit a bull’s-eye by throwing a dart over their shoulder. The hour rolled around, the bell rang, we trooped off to our dormitory and went to bed. Some time later we were woken by a prefect banging the door open, turning the lights on and telling us that the housemaster wanted to see us all in his study – now." MORE >