Freakslaw

Author Jane Flett
Narrator Abigail Lawrie
Publisher Transworld
Run Time 10 hours and 55 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Contemporary horror and ghost stories, Modern and contemporary fiction, Occult fiction.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Discover the dazzling new queer literary horror novel about chosen family and the risks it takes to become the person you want to be.

A travelling funfair of seductive troublemakers arrive in a repressed Scottish town. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s the summer of ’97 and the Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change.

Enter the Freakslaw – a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem. It doesn’t take long for the Freakslaw folk to infiltrate Pitlaw’s grey world, where the town’s teenagers – none more so than Ruth and Derek – are seduced by neon charms and the possibility of escape.

But beneath it all, these newcomers are harbouring a darker desire: revenge.

And as tensions reach fever pitch between the stoic locals and the dazzling intruders, a violence that’s been simmering for centuries is about to be unleashed…

‘The glittery punk offspring of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus.’ Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

© Jane Flett 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

A transgressive, inventive dark fantasy with believably complex characters.

Guardian

Crackling with desire, hedonism, angst, violence and sex, this is a vibrant and wildly entertaining read.

Heat

The zany narrative races along, stuffed with chaos, magic and fabulously unique characters. It’s brilliant on how badly society treats its ‘freaks’. Mad and fun.

Daily Mail

If it feels as if her debut […] is one she was born to write, then good for her. She succeeds magnificently, leaning into every queer punk excess and fantastical delight . . . A celebration of the marginalised, reframing otherness as a source of great vitality and power.

Observer

As frightening as it is seductive, this tale of a tightly knit band of outsiders pitting themselves against “that pulsing Calvinist heart” makes for a dark but thrillingly vibrant read.

Herald

Freakslaw is nonstop freaky, witchy, outlaw, glamour misfit fantasy – adventure fantasy, sex fantasy, revenge fantasy. Geek Love meets American Horror Story meets The Craft meets John Waters. I’d kill to run away with this circus.

Michelle Tea, author of Modern Tarot

A shimmering blade of a book. Every sentence is honed for high delight — a captivating cast of characters, dazzling language, and so funny — but there’s a smart and dangerous bite to all the campy, glittery glory. Freakslaw makes space for feminist, queer anger… and shows it a great time. We’ve never been so happy to roll up, roll up.

Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, authors of The View Was Exhausting

Delightful, delirious and transgressive, this book is the wildest of carnival rides, an open-mouthed kiss with the lingering taste of candyfloss and smoke. Jane Flett has created a queer punk masterpiece and we should all be so lucky to have our lives turned upside down by a visit to the Freakslaw.

Leon Craig, author of Parallel Hells

Freakslaw is a cornucopia of the carnivalesque, where freaks are fabulous and weird is wonderful. Flett’s sumptuously technicolour prose is as startlingly original as it is compulsively moreish.

Carole Hailey, author of The Silence Project

Part block party, part call to arms, Freakslaw is almost a new kind of genre. Wild, raunchy, brutal – a madcap funhouse with heart.

Liska Jacobs, author of The Pink Hotel

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