The Body Lies

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What to expect

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Body Lies by Jo Baker, read by Imogen Church, Deborah McBride, Sam Woolf, Simon Ludders and Julie Maisey.

A layered and thrilling suspense novel that grapples with how to live as a woman in the modern world - or in the pages of a book - when the stakes are dangerously high.


When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote countryside, it’s meant to be a fresh start, away from the big city and the scene of a violent assault she’s desperate to forget. But despite the distractions of a new life and single motherhood, her nerves continue to jangle. To make matters worse, a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative writing group.

When a troubled student starts sending in chapters from his novel that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognises herself as the main character in his book - and he has written her a horrific fate.

Will she be able to stop life imitating art before it's too late?

At once a breathless cat-and-mouse game and a disarming exploration of sexual politics, The Body Lies is an essential book for our times.

Critics Review

A propulsive #MeToo thriller investi­gating consent and male entitlement as well as the borders between truth and fiction.

Guardian

Build-up of tension is EXCELLENT

Daily Mail

Packs a powerful punch on every page

Red Magazine

Gripping … with lots to say about sexual politics

Good Housekeeping

This superior thriller looks at how novels represent violence through the story of a creative writing teacher who finds herself trapped between the borders of life and fiction after recognising herself in a story written by one of her students

METRO

Powerful read

Prima Magazine

Jo Baker’s THE BODY LIES is gripping and strange in the best possible way: the perfect marriage of risky literary fiction and full-on thriller.

MARIA SEMPLE, bestselling author of Where d'ya go, Bernadette?

This page-turning thrilller has a sympathetic and utterly believable heroine, but it’s also an examination of how women’s bodies are treated, in life and in fiction.

The Bookseller

A literary exploration of consent, entitlement and how narratives can be bent, misappropriated and wrested back. I loved it.

SARAH VAUGHAN, bestselling author of THE ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL

A shrewdly layered thriller that unflinchingly tackles the quagmire of pressure, judgement and ever-present danger women navigate in their daily lives

Herald Scotland

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