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Out now · hardback, ebook, audio
The Salt Line
A novel about the year the tide came in and stayed. Three hundred pages, one village, and everyone in it lying to somebody.
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The opening
The tide came in on the Tuesday and by the Friday nobody was pretending it would go out again.
Mara watched it from the kitchen window the way you watch a relative you have decided not to speak to: steadily, without appearing to. It had taken the lower field first, then the lane, then the shed her father had built the summer before he left, which went sideways rather than under and stayed that way for a week, leaning, like something considering its options.
On the Saturday the men came from the council with a clipboard and a boat. They asked her what she had lost and she said nothing, which was the first lie, and they wrote it down.
Mara watched it from the kitchen window the way you watch a relative you have decided not to speak to: steadily, without appearing to. It had taken the lower field first, then the lane, then the shed her father had built the summer before he left, which went sideways rather than under and stayed that way for a week, leaning, like something considering its options.
On the Saturday the men came from the council with a clipboard and a boat. They asked her what she had lost and she said nothing, which was the first lie, and they wrote it down.
Replace this with your own opening pages — two or three hundred words is plenty.
Early praise
★★★★★
“Reads like something recovered rather than written. I finished it in a night and then sat there.”
A trade reviewer
★★★★★
“The best kind of quiet book — nothing happens for forty pages and you cannot look away from any of it.”
A bookseller
Replace these with your real quotes and their sources before publishing. An invented blurb is a fabricated review.
On tour
- Thu, Aug 27 · 5:28 AMLaunch night — in conversation📍 Northgate Books, Northgate
Reading, questions, signing. Free, but ticketed.
- Thu, Sep 17 · 5:28 AMFestival appearance📍 Harbour Festival, main tent
Panel on writing place.
- Sun, Oct 4 · 5:28 AMLibrary reading📍 Eastfield Central Library
Free, no booking, tea afterwards.
- Thu, Oct 22 · 5:28 AMBookshop signing📍 The Reading Room, Kingsgate
Drop in any time between 2 and 4.
Swap these for your own dates and set your timezone — visitors see the time in theirs, with yours alongside.
Hear about the next one
A few emails a year, only when there's a book or a date. Nothing else, ever.
Invite me to an event
Book clubs, by video — Free, about one a month
Libraries and schools — Authors' society rate, or free if there's no budget
Festivals and paid events — Through my agent
Libraries and schools — Authors' society rate, or free if there's no budget
Festivals and paid events — Through my agent
Live preview — every color, word and block is editable after you pick it.