Whidbey

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What to expect

'Audacious and instantly gripping . . . Whidbey is deeply satisfying' Catherine Chidgey, New York Times
'There is, to put it simply, no book quite like Whidbey' Vogue
'In the realm of Patricia Highsmith and Gone Girl' Chelsea Bieker
'A masterpiece' Carmen Maria Machado
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You want to know who did it, but that was never the question. Or, it was never the right one.

Birdie Chang doesn't know much about Whidbey Island, only that it is far. On the ferry, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger, where she finds herself telling him everything: how she was sexually abused as a child, how the perpetrator now walks free, how the calls and emails from him haven't stopped and she is on the run; how she wants to kill him. The stranger poses a shocking question - if she agrees, he will murder the man who hurt her, with no strings attached. She gives him a name.

On the other side of the country, Mary-Beth receives a phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. What follows is a complex story of three women connected through one man: Birdie, a woman on the run from her past and her abuser; Mary-Beth, the abuser's loving mother; and Linzie, a former reality star turned bestselling memoirist, and another victim of the same man.

Whidbey is a brilliant reimagining of the whodunnit - a searing, propulsive novel that asks who has real power over a story: the one who lives it, or the one who tells it?

Women are rarely in receipt of what they are owed.

Critics Review

'It is not enough to say that Whidbey is a masterpiece or T Kira Madden is a genius - it is, she is. But how lucky we are to have such a radically empathetic novel about pain and justice. Whidbey is an exceptional and staggering gift' CARMEN MARIA MACHADO, author of In the Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties
'Epic in its scope, intimate in its evocation, Whidbey reads like a thriller, compels like a mystery and regarding the human condition, converses with the classics. This is the book everyone will be talking about' ADAM JOHNSON, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Orphan Master's Son
'Bold, searing and elegant, Whidbey is a hauntingly original literary mystery. I couldn't put it down. It's a necessary novel, written with a stark and rare honesty - both devastating and deeply human' LUCY ROSE, author of The Lamb
'Reading Whidbey feels like witnessing a cosmic, unlikely happening, like the planets aligning. This book will break you open. Whidbey is a Masterwork' NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, New York Times bestselling author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
'Madden holds nothing back in Whidbey. In the realm of Patricia Highsmith and Gone Girl lives Whidbey, an extraordinary masterpiece' CHELSEA BIEKER, author of Madwoman
'Whidbey is the book I've been praying for. T Kira Mahealani Madden is undoubtedly one of our greatest contemporary writers' KRISTEN ARNETT, author of Mostly Dead Things
'To read T Kira Madden is to feel your insides endlessly shifting, between barbed and rage-simmering to amused and serene. I would follow T Kira anywhere' CHANEL MILLER, author of Know My Name
'Madden goes to the darkest crannies of the human soul. This is a novel but it is also one of the truest books I have read in a long time. Come for the hook and stay for the women' ROWAN HISAYO BUCHANAN , author of Harmless Like You
''You've never read a crime novel like this' PEOPLE
This is an absorbing, energised novel of real-feeling characters attempting to live through incomprehensible violence and existential fury' BOOKLIST starred review

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