Annalena McAfee

'Engrossing...I loved each and every brushstroke' Ian Rankin 'Nightshade is a glorious novel... full of twisted sexuality, art and power' Observer Could the creative urge be the most destructive - even the deadliest - impulse of all? Could it end in death? Eve Laing, once the muse of an infamous painter, is now - forty years later - an artist herself. But she has sacrificed her career for her family. She resents the global success of her old college roommate. She is slowly unravelling. When Eve embarks on her most ambitious work yet, she takes a wrecking ball to her comfortable life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover who seems to share her single-minded creative vision. This timely novel explores sexual politics, asking if the true artist must relinquish the ordinary human need for love and connection to pave the way for desire and ambition, leading to a fatal awakening...

Nightshade

'Hame, n. Scottish form of 'home': a valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.' In the wake of the breakdown of her relationship, Mhairi McPhail dismantles her life in New York and moves with her 9-year-old daughter, Agnes, to the remote Scottish island of Fascaray. Mhairi has been commissioned to write a biography of the late Bard of Fascaray, Grigor McWatt, a cantankerous poet with an international reputation. But who was Grigor McWatt? Details of his past - his tough childhood and his war years as a commando - are elusive, and there is evidence of a mysterious love affair which Mhairi is determined to investigate. As she struggles to adapt to her new life, and put her own troubled past behind her, Mhairi begins to unearth the astonishing secret history of the poet regarded by many as the custodian of Fascaray's - and Scotland's soul.

Hame

Hame, n. Scottish form of ‘home’: a valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin After her relationship breaks down, Mhairi McPhail dismantles her life in New York and moves with her nine-year-old daughter, Agnes, to the remote Scottish island of Fascaray to write the biography of Grigor McWatt, the late Bard of Fascaray. But who was the cantankerous Grigor McWatt? Despite his international reputation, details of his past are elusive. As Mhairi struggles to adapt to her new life she begins to unearth the astonishing secret history of the poet regarded by many as the custodian of Fascaray’s – and Scotland’s – soul.

Belladonna

In the 1990s, during the waning days of print media, a gossip reporter tries to get all the dirt on an aging female war correspondent, in an encounter that will change both their lives

The Spoiler

A lean, taut novel about an artist—a painter—at the height of her career; about the art world; about love, fidelity, fame, betrayal and the prices paid in the quest for art for art's sake. Eve Laing, celebrated artist, once the muse of legendary painter and monstre sacré Florian Kiš, is a photorealist painter of flowers at the peak of her career, with her work in international galleries and museums. Now Eve is embarking on her most ambitious work to date—seven enormous, elaborate panels depicting the world’s deadliest plants. In psychic preparation, she has taken a wrecking ball to her opulent life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who seems to share her single-minded artistic vision. As the novel opens, Eve is on a late-night walk through London. Eve makes her way through the city and reflects on her life, the choices she has made, and their repercussions, summoning up her wild art college days in London; her New York years as a tyro artist; her vicious rivalry with her college roommate, now a celebrated figure on the international conceptual art scene. With a growing sense of dread, Eve weighs what’s been gained and what’s been lost in pursuit of her art as Nightshade moves to its dark, shocking end.

A novel

A rich, sultry, ambitious novel about a young American writer/curator, fleeing a crumbling marriage in New York who travels with her nine-year old daughter to one of the remote islands in the north of Scotland, birthplace of her grandfather. Commissioned to set up a museum there and to write the biography of the island's celebrated poet and chronicler, Mhairi McPhail is slowly drawn in by the complicated life she is uncovering and writing about--the Bard of Fascaray--as she finds herself being transformed, awakened by the ferocity and power of the island. Who was the celebrated poet, Grigor McWatt, The Bard of Fascaray? What was his past? Details of his life are elusive. As Mhairi struggles to adapt to her island life and put her disappointment and troubles behind her, she begins to unearth the astonishing secret history of the poet, regarded by many as the custodian of Fascaray's--and Scotland's--soul. In McAfee's rich novel of invented island life, she interweaves extracts from Mhairi's journal entries, her discoveries and writings of McWatt, and tales of Fascaray itself into a resonant, compelling, dimensional narrative that at its heart explores identity, love, belonging and the universal quest for home.

Hame, n. Scottish form of 'home': a valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin In the wake of the breakdown of her relationship, Mhairi McPhail dismantles her life in New York and moves with her 9-year-old daughter, Agnes, to the remote Scottish island of Fascaray. Mhairi has been commissioned to write a biography of the late Bard of Fascaray, Grigor McWatt, a cantankerous poet with an international reputation. But who was Grigor McWatt? Details of his past - his tough childhood and his war years as a commando - are elusive, and there is evidence of a mysterious love affair which Mhairi is determined to investigate. As she struggles to adapt to her new life, and put her own troubled past behind her, Mhairi begins to unearth the astonishing secret history of the poet regarded by many as the custodian of Fascaray's - and Scotland's - soul. A dazzling, kaleidoscope of a novel, Hame layers extracts from Mhairi's journal, Grigor's letters and poems and his evocative writing about the island into a compelling narrative that explores identity, love and the universal quest for home.

A lean, taut novel about an artist—a painter—at the height of her career, about the art world, about love, fidelity, fame, betrayal, and the large choices and prices paid in the quest for art for art's sake. By the much-admired author of The Spoiler ("cutting wit and razor-sharp writing"—NYTBR; "a dark, sparkly gem of a book"—Christopher Buckley) and Hame ("I couldn't put it down"—Patrick McGrath). Eve Laing, celebrated artist, once the muse of legendary painter and "monstre sacré" Florian Kiš, is a photorealist painter of flowers at the peak of her career, with her work in international galleries and museums. Now Eve is embarking on her most ambitious work to date—seven enormous, elaborate panels of the world's deadliest plants. In psychic preparation, she has taken a wrecking ball to her opulent high-wire life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who seems to share her single-minded artistic vision. As the novel opens out, Eve is on a late-night walk through London, setting out from her former family home in the well-heeled west of the city, back to her studio, a converted factory in the grittier east, where her recently completed masterpiece hangs and where a fatal reckoning may await. . . . Eve makes her way through the city and reflects on her life today and as it was years ago, and considers the large choices she has made and their repercussions. As she walks, she summons up her wild art college days in London; her New York years as a tyro artist; her vicious rivalry with her college roommate, now a celebrated figure on the international conceptual art scene whose full-blown success and recognition still infuriates and rankles Eve's sense of rightness with the world. And as she weighs what's been gained and what's been lost in pursuit of her art, a sense of dread settles over her, one she cannot shake, and as Nightshade moves to its dark, shocking end, it explores large questions--about ambition . . . artistic truth . . . betrayal . . . about bad people making good art . . . about the consequences of fame . . . and the devastating price of love.

A young boy asks his grandfather questions about life and nature, and gets some humorous answers.

Why Do Stars Come Out at Night?

Tamara Sim, a ruthlessly ambitious young journalist, is thrilled when she is sent to interview veteran war correspondent Honor Tait. Finally - a chance for Tamara to prove that there's more to her than forged expenses claims and the 'what's in/what's out' column she churns out for her tabloid. But Honor isn't an easy subject; cold and evasive to the point of rudeness, it's almost as if she has something to hide. And when Tamara starts to do some digging (not all of it strictly legal) she makes a discovery which has devastating consequences for them both... In The Spoiler, the former literary editor of the Financial Times and the Guardian offers a first hand glimpse into the world of British journalism.

Katy lives alone with her dad by the sea and she likes it that way. Then, one day, the visitors come to stay, Mary and her son Sean. Now Katy has to share her house, her toys, her walks, her dad and she doesn't like it at all. Her hostility drives the visitors away, but eventually she comes around to accepting them.

The Visitors who Came to Stay

A dark hyper-comedy set in London in the late 1990s during the last gasp of the newspaper wars just before the dot-com tidal wave--about two female journalists at opposite ends of their life and work who become locked in a fierce tango of wills and whose lives are forever changed by their (not-so-) brief (head-on) encounter. At the novel's center--a legendary prize-winning war correspondent (called in her day "The Newsroom Dietrich" because of her luminescent beauty) now in her eighties, at the end of her career, who, over the decades, as the intrepid golden girl of the press, has been on the front lines or in the foxholes of every major theater of war of the twentieth century (Madrid; Normandy; Buchenwald; Berlin; Algiers; Korea; Vietnam). She is recognized everywhere (she finds fame mortifying these days); lionized for her fearless, politically informed, objective reporting; and now, though fragile and in an accelerating decline, her goddess-like beauty long gone, her style of writing--unbiased reportage--obsolete in the age of New Journalism, is rediscovered with the reissue of her frontline journalism, and the about-to-be-published collection of her Pulitzer Prize-winning dispatches. The other, a young up-and-not-so-coming reporter in her twenties; a degree in media studies, a freelance editor who compiles A-lists (Ten Best / Ten Worst; What's In / What's Out) for a down-market magazine of a newspaper specializing in celebrity gossip, unexpectedly sent to write a feature on the venerated "doyenne of British journalists"--to get the dirt on her glittering Hollywood days, her many affairs and three marriages...What ensues is a high-stakes, high-risk battle of wit and wills as lives are shaken, secrets unearthed, and headlines blast (unconfirmed) "truths," with one newspaper--the spoiler--playing off against another in a ruthless, desperate grab for sensation and circulation.

«Brulicante di vita, e di passione, e di intelligenza». «The Herald» «La complessità emotiva della scrittura di McAfee si rivela all'altezza del paesaggio dell'isola e del mare che la circonda». «Literary Review»

Annalena McAfee

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