Immensely evocative of the salty seascapes of seventeenth-century Britain, Preston's riveting historical novel sends a young woman into a cut-throat world of smugglers in a quest to avenge her father's vicious slaying.
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. Then, when Goody turns sixteen, her father is murdered in the night by men he thought were friends.
To find justice in a lawless land, Goody must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers. With her beloved brother Francis, she joins a rival gang of smugglers. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she also discovers something else: an existence without constraints or expectations, a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.
Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?
Winchelsea is an electrifying story of vengeance and transformation; a rare, lyrical and transporting work of historical imagination that makes the past so real we can touch it.
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 9781838854843
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 464 g
Dimensions: 220 x 144 x 33 mm
Edition: Main
Imagine Daphne du Maurier crossed with Quentin Tarantino, and you will have some idea of just what a thrilling, bloody and heady ride this novel is - TOM HOLLAND
I was riveted. Winchelsea is a great read - terrific narrative drive, credible characters, and such an elegant creation of the backdrop in terms of both time and place - PENELOPE LIVELY
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
Winchelsea is a remarkable act of literary time travel: dark and gripping and soaked in blood and salt water - EVIE WYLD
[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 - The Books of the Year 2022, Spectator
There's a wild piratical darkness to Winchelsea which is charged by the evocative and strange wilderness of its setting on the Romney Marshes. At its heart is a gripping tale: a life-and-death struggle, set in the eighteenth century yet vibrantly heightened by a sureness of visceral detail and a vivid depth of characterisation. This is historical drama on a deft and uproarious scale, and it makes for a breathlessly exciting and engaging read - PHILIP HOARE
I was sent a copy of Winchelsea by Alex Preston to read and review by NetGalley. This is a fair swashbuckling book about smugglers and survival. Told in three separate parts, narrated in the first person by three of... More
3.5 stars
This book was so slow-burner that for the first ⅓ of it I thought I might not finish it at all. But in the end I’m very happy I didn’t leave it. After recounting those first and, frankly, quite...
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1742 and the once prosperous town of Winchelsea is now just a haunt for smugglers. For orphan Goody Brown, her world is turned upside down when her adoptive father falls foul of the gang he works with and is mudered.... More
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