AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4
A SPECTATOR BEST OF THE YEAR - AS CHOSEN BY REVIEWERS

The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. But when she turns sixteen, her father is murdered by men he thought were friends.

In a town where lawlessness prevails, Goody and her brother Francis must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers in order to find justice. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she discovers what life can be like without constraints or expectations, developing a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.

Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?

"Boisterous . . . evocative . . . What holds the novel together as much as its driving plot are its incantatory atmosphere and spellbinding language" - * Guardian *

"Preston is a gifted prose cartographer, conjuring up the Sussex coastline in a crisp, clear fashion . . . He has written a bawdy, thunderous romp that echoes with cannon fire, sea shanties and the occasional plaintive cry of a nightjar" - * Financial Times *

"Glorious" - * Spectator *

"[A] spellbinding read, both gory and gorgeous" - * Daily Mail *

"Truly epic . . . The richness and enthusiasm of the prose speaks of a novelist who loves the process of spinning an unpredictable, fabulist yarn" - * i *

"A rip-roaring yarn about smugglers and seafarers in Romney Marsh and its coastal hinterland in the 18th century. The energy, word play and attention to contemporary detail could not be bettered" - * Spectator *