Lightning Fiction Debuts

Lightning authors

Six of the best

We have packaged together six of our finest fiction debuts. The bundle consists of:

The Industry of Human Happiness, James Hall’s page-turning melodrama set against the backdrop of the ‘format wars’ at the birth of recorded sound; gripping and historically enthralling.

‘A fascinating novel set in a fascinating world’ Robert Elms

‘A grim cautionary tale about the dangers of obsession. Hall’s deep understanding and fondness for his subject comes crackling out of every page’ Daily Telegraph

Their Brilliant Careers, a hilarious collection of biographies of Australian literary giants (all fictitious), fitting together to form an ingenious shadow narrative; written by Scottish-born Ryan O‘Neill, it won the Australian Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction.

‘A brilliant work of fiction’ Stewart Lee

‘A divine satire on the narcissism of the literary world’ The i Paper

The Hopkins Conundrum by Simon Edge, based on the life of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the doomed nuns in his most famous poem, and framed within a satire on the Da Vinci Code industry; it shouldn’t work, but it does.

‘I love this novel. It pulls off the three-card trick of being entertaining, genuinely touching, and a fascinating insight into Hopkins’ poetry’ Harriett Gilbert

‘Seesaws between comedy and calamity, present and past – a novel enjoyable on every level’ Daily Express

Beneath the Streets by Adam Macqueen, set in the Soho underworld of the 1970s, imagining what might have happened if Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe had succeeded in his plot to kill his male ex-lover; its sting in the tail reminds us that the truth can be just as chilling as fiction.

‘A breathtaking, heartbreaking thriller’ Jake Arnott

‘This very English scandal has wit and invention to spare’ The Observer

Wolf Country, the debut novel from Hungarian-born Tünde Farrand; set in a world where ageing has been abolished in favour of blissful euthanasia, it has now been published in four other languages.

‘A chilling and politically astute dystopia – sci-fi in the tradition of John Wyndham’ Jane Rogers

‘Gripping’ The i Paper – top debut novels of 2019

The Antipodeans, Greg McGee’s three-generation saga about New Zealand prisoners-of-war in Northern Italy spent a year in the New Zealand bestseller charts and was longlisted for that country’s main literary prize.

‘Like a Venetian Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.... you won’t want to put it down’ Simon Edge

‘Finding out how the past has shaped and informed the present gives this enthralling book the tautness of a thriller ... Remarkable’ New Zealand Listener

Six paperbacks

RRP £53.94