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  • Published: 6 May 2027
  • ISBN: 9781405996266
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

The Green March Hotel




A gloriously, devastatingly life-affirming debut novel for readers of Still Life, The List of Suspicious Things and Clare Chambers

'I will be putting The Green March Hotel in everyone's hands and imploring them to read it, I loved it so much' JENNIE GODFREY

'Quirky, funny, shocking and gripping' AJ PEARCE

It is 1984, and Morris Spencer, reeling from news of a terminal diagnosis, checks into a crumbling cliff-top hotel on a small island off the English coast, intending to die quietly and unobtrusively, the same way he has lived his whole life.

At the same time, two young women arrive looking for work at the Green March: Natalie, quiet, contained and carrying scars both inside and out; Rachel, ablaze with life, mischief and possibility. And then a dead girl washes up on the beach.

Morris is drawn into the mystery of her murder, but far deeper into the lives of the people around him.: quick-witted Miss Fathom, perhaps as old as the hotel itself and a source of wisdom and surprising vices; Louis, a furious, foul-mouthed artist; Dan, an ex-soldier who nurses a hidden love, and Lola, caught in the undertow of her past and the devastating secret she's never dared to share.

The Green March Hotel is a funny, eccentric, haunting and heartbreaking novel about the stubborn, battered, ridiculous, magnificent business of being alive. It’s about the all-too-human monsters beneath the surface, but also the play of the light on the water and the ways in which we rescue one another. Above all it’s a luminous reminder of why, at the end of the day, we keep on setting out our deckchairs in the rain.

  • Published: 6 May 2027
  • ISBN: 9781405996266
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 320

About the author

Sophie Livingston

Sophie Livingston worked as a news and feature writer for two Kent-based newspaper groups for fifteen years. Her short stories have appeared in various publications and anthologies. She was longlisted for the InkTears flash fiction competition in 2017, the Mslexia/Poetry Book Society Women’s Poetry Prize in 2019, and the Fish Short Story Prize in 2020, and the 2024 Bridport Prize. She lives in Wiltshire. The Green March Hotel was a finalist in the 2021 Mslexia First Novel Competition judged by Hilary Mantel.

Praise for The Green March Hotel

What a debut novel. I will be putting The Green March Hotel in everyone's hands and imploring them to read it, I loved it so much

Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things

The Green March Hotel has it all. In equal parts quirky, funny, shocking and gripping, Sophie Livingston’s superb debut is one of those novels you will find yourself thinking about long after you’ve finished reading it

AJ Pearce, author of Dear Mrs Bird