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  • Published: 3 May 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241327678
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

Whistle in the Dark

From the bestselling author of Elizabeth is Missing




Four missing days. Could you cope with not knowing?

Jen's 15-year-old daughter goes missing for four agonizing days. When Lana is found, unharmed, in the middle of the desolate countryside, everyone thinks the worst is over. But Lana refuses to tell anyone what happened, and the police draw a blank. The once-happy, loving family return to London, where things start to fall apart. Lana begins acting strangely: refusing to go to school, and sleeping with the light on.

As Lana stays stubbornly silent, Jen desperately tries to reach out to a daughter who has become a stranger.

  • Published: 3 May 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241327678
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

About the author

Emma Healey

Emma Healey is 28 years old and grew up in London. She has spent most of her working life in libraries, bookshops and galleries. She completed the MA in Creative Writing: Prose at UEA in 2011. Elizabeth is Missing is her first novel.

Also by Emma Healey

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Praise for Whistle in the Dark

[A] satisfying, cathartic mystery

Jenny Colgan, Guardian

A beautiful exploration of mental health and love

Stylist

A compelling modern family drama with witty and wonderful characters. Utter bliss.

Nina Stibbe

A fast-paced, gripping read

Closer

A gripping tale ... a deeply affecting account of one woman's quiet but unyielding refusal to allow hope to succumb to helplessness and despair

The Irish Times

A sensitive study of a mother-daughter relationship

Woman & Home

A sharp and sympathetic description of the whole strange business of and having a teenage child - and of being one

Reader's Digest

A sobering journey into the underworld of the human psyche

Irish Independent

An enjoyable novel about the complicated bonds of family life

Mail on Sunday

At once an absorbing thriller and a beautifully observed study of the relationship between mother and teenage daughter

Refinery29

Authentically and empathetically written

Daily Telegraph

Beautifully written

Good Housekeeping

Courageous...intriguing...entertaining

Observer

Gripping

Bella

Healey broadens the remit of the thriller...the author has managed a double feat here, creating a psychological thriller that meshes the homely with the gothic...the novel builds to a climax and the moving final sentence is formally and emotionally the perfect resolution

Literary Review

Healey is a natural story-teller

Claire Fuller, author of 'Our Endless Numbered Days'

Healey thoughtfully explores complex problems facing young women and families today and in Lana she has created a masterpiece of inarticulacy

Daily Express, Four Stars

I adored the forensic detail of Healey's writing and the wry, sharp take on millenial family life

Daily Mail

I don't know anyone else who writes like this. Emma Healey's voice soars, sings and startles as she takes you right under the skin of her characters. She 'magics' the ordinary into the extraordinary and, just as impressively, transposes the extraordinary to the ordinary. Unforgettable.

Jane Corry, bestselling author of 'My Husband's Wife'

It's as gripping as its predecessor

Elle

Many will relate to the fraught familial relationships, which are expertly realised in this tense contemporary novel ... the interactions are so utterly real that you get completely drawn into their world ... Healey writes with such an ease and naturalness that it carries you effortlessly forward

Sunday Independent

Quirky, humorous and entirely engrossing

Sunday Mirror

Rich with emotional depth

Evening Standard

The achievement of this follow-up lies its finely drawn mother/daughter pairing and sharp take on the nitty-gritty of contemporary familial relationships...the desperate love of a parent for a child they cannot know is wonderfully true to life

Guardian

The novel's real strength, though, lies in its examination of such intimate familial ties and the incredulity that in a world of Google Earth, rolling news and endless online discussion groups, something - a mystery - could still go unmapped. And the conundrum isn't even so much where Lana has been, but how parents can connect with their children in such dilemmas, and how many of life's problems cannot be immediately or easily solved

Financial Times

There's a winning irreverence to Healey's writing

Guardian

This novel is a beautiful and rare thing - a page turning thriller with all the pain, warmth and humour of authentic family life portrayed. I absolutely loved it.

Kate Hamer, author of 'The Girl in the Red Coat'

Utterly compelling and insightful, I was drawn into this family in crisis from the first chapter of this unflinchingly honest and beautifully written novel

Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of 'Sister'

Written with captivating brilliance and oozing with tension, this is a novel you really do not want to miss

Heat, Five Stars