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Hunger and Thirst
  • Published: 7 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781405988452
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $32.00

Hunger and Thirst

Formats & editions
EBook
7 May 2026
Audiobook
7 May 2026
Hardback
7 June 2026
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The new novel from Women's Prize-shortlisted, Costa Award-winning author of Unsettled Ground - an addictively propulsive, richly nuanced and haunting story of horrors without and within

1987: After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job in the postroom of a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and—delightfully— some new friends, including wild-child, Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at The Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist the promise of a readymade, hodgepodge family.

But as Sue’s behaviour and demands become more extreme, Ursula who has always been hungry—for food—and more importantly for love, acceptance and belonging, carries out her friend’s terrible dare. It's a decision that will haunt her for decades.

Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by true-crime documentary-maker who is digging into an unsolved disappearance. But it is not only the filmmaker who has discovered Ursula’s whereabouts, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without.

From critically acclaimed and award-winning author, Claire Fuller, Hunger and Thirst is a compelling and chilling tale of loneliness and female friendship, of the dangerous line between wanting and needing, and of how far a person will go to truly belong.
  • Published: 7 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781405988452
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $32.00
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About the author

Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller was born in Oxfordshire, England, in 1967. She gained a degree in sculpture from Winchester School of Art, but went on to have a long career in marketing and didn't start writing until she was forty. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband and two children. She is also an artist and sculptor and has had several short stories published. Our Endless Numbered Days is her first novel.

CF

Also by Claire Fuller

Unsettled Ground
Bitter Orange
The Memory of Animals
Swimming Lessons
Our Endless Numbered Days
See all

Praise for Hunger and Thirst

I was enthralled, rapt, utterly unable to put this book down. Claire Fuller, a master of psychic suspense, has done it again

Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive

Harrowing and tender ... the kind of book to clear a weekend for, the kind of resonant nightmare that lingers long after its end

Hayden Casey, author of A Harvest of Furies

Atmospheric, psychologically vivid, and unputdownable ... it frightened and enthralled me

Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam

A gothic chiller — haunting, artful, suspenseful, complex, and cinematic

Bill Landay, author of All That is Mine I Carry With Me

‘An absolute masterpiece. Utterly absorbing, genuinely unsettling … like all the most terrifying horror films of the 70’s and 80’s and all the most scary ghost stories’

Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things

Gothic, disturbing, and mesmerisingly well-written, Hunger & Thirst is like nothing I’ve read before. Claire Fuller’s ability to generate suspense, revulsion, and disquiet within a nuanced and intelligent world is second to none.

Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie Lane

A truly chilling story ... I was entirely captured in this novel’s haunting spell

Essie Fox, author of The Fascination