Inspired by the true story of a shocking scandal underpinning a police department, Nightcrawling is a searing debut novel about vulnerability and survival from an astonishing young talent

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 – THE YOUNGEST EVER BOOKER NOMINEE
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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‘Mottley attempts to do for Oakland something of what The Wire did for Baltimore' THE TIMES
'A soul-searching portrait of survival and hope' OPRAH WINFREY
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We’ll laugh because we can, until the sun disintegrates and nighttime threatens to set us free just to capture us again, back into the things we can’t escape.

Kiara does not know what it is to live as a normal seventeen-year-old. With her mother in a halfway house, she fends for herself – and for nine-year-old Trevor, whose own mother disappears for days at a time. But as the pressures of rent to pay and mouths to feed increase, Kiara finds herself walking the streets after dark, determined to survive in a world that refuses to protect her.

Nightcrawling is an unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising.
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'UNFORGETTABLE' GUARDIAN
'A MAGNIFICENT DEBUT' RUTH OZEKI, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022
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READERS CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF NIGHTCRAWLING

'Nightcrawling is a lyrical masterpiece' *****

'This book ripped my heart out' *****

'Unputdownable . . . From the first page I was hooked' *****

'This is a heart-achingly necessary book which will carve a hole in your soul and stay with you forever' *****

'It is rare to read a first novel so perfectly crafted' *****

'This is an absolute must-read. Five stars out of five' *****

'Completely gripping . . . This is going to be a huge bestseller' *****

"Uncompromising yet exhilaratingly charged by Mottley’s deep feeling and stylistic flair" - Daily Mail, Books of the Year

"Nineteen-year-old poet Leila Mottley has been hailed as the ‘voice of a generation’, a claim that seems less hyperbolic the more you read of her assured, moving and powerful fiction debut . . . Freighted with sentences of tough lyricism, it feels like an immense achievement" - Daily Mail

"A rare and compelling meditation on the powerless . . . Not only a fearless investigation of justice, guilt and prejudice, but an allegory of the potential power of speech, narrative and fiction itself . . . Nightcrawling marks the dazzling arrival of a young writer with a voice and vision you won’t easily get out of your head" - Guardian

"She whips through the plot, packing poetic punch after punch . . . Now that Mottley has found her own voice, America – and readers in the UK – will be watching" - i paper

"Both a searing depiction of sexual exploitation and a gripping account of a struggle for survival… Grimly captivating … Rich and inventive" - Economist

"An uncommonly assured debut . . . Nightcrawling is written with a poet’s ear and a novelist’s sense of character, structure and ambience" - Observer

"Mottley’s fluid, instinctive writing soars . . . This feels like a remarkable debut, one that holds an illuminating if unflattering mirror to modern America. It is exciting to wonder what might lie ahead for this writer" - Sunday Times

"Kiara is as virtuous and put-upon as any heroine in Dickens. But she is always a lively presence on the page even at her most downtrodden, thanks to her expressive narrative voice … the risks she takes generally pay off so well that one finishes the book grumbling: nobody who has just turned twenty has any business writing this well" - Sunday Telegraph

"This book proves its author is a literary star in the making" - Elle

"Unflinching, poetic and deeply resonant, this stunning debut from Oakland teen Leila Mottley marks the arrival of an extraordinary new voice" - Woman's Own

"A blistering exploration of power" - Stylist Loves