Sara Collins

'Deep-diving and elegant . . . Wide Sargasso Sea meets Beloved meets Alias Grace' Margaret Atwood 'Sara Collins takes the gothic genre by the scruff of the neck...a triumph of powerful characterisation melded with suspenseful plotting' Bernadine Evaristo THE 'DAZZLINGLY ORIGINAL' DEBUT NOVEL BY A NEW LITERARY STAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARDS FIRST NOVEL PRIZE 2019 'They say I must be put to death for what happened to Madame, and they want me to confess. But how can I confess what I don't believe I've done?' 1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on trial for their murder. The testimonies against her are damning - slave, whore, seductress. And they may be the truth. But they are not the whole truth. For the first time Frannie must tell her story. It begins with a girl learning to read on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends in a grand house in London, where a beautiful woman waits to be freed. But through her fevered confessions, one burning question haunts Frannie Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved? A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE MONTH A beautiful and haunting tale about one woman's fight to tell her story, The Confessions of Frannie Langton leads you through laudanum-laced dressing rooms and dark-as-night back alleys, into the enthralling heart of Georgian London. 'A dazzling page-turner' Emma Donoghue 'A star in the making' Sunday Times 'Gothic fiction made brand new' Stef Penney 'Stunning' Guardian 'Spectacular' Natasha Pulley 'Dazzlingly original' The Times 'A heroine for our times' Elizabeth Day

The Costa Book Awards First Novel Winner 2019

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

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But I just wanted to keep that book as close as I could get it to my skin. Not to remind myself happiness was still possible, but to remind myself that anger was.

And what do two women do in a room of their own? Isn't this the question that troubles my accusers most? Such an easy thing to hide in plain sight - a lady and her abigail – all eyes looking the wrong way. Theof

She kept her arm above her head, and I crossed over to her thinking how each step dragged me backwards, how I didn't dare touch her, because I wanted nothing more, but had to touch her, if I wanted to stay. Touching her was my work, now. My jaw clenched. 

Life is a brief candle but love is a craving for time. Therefore, I was already cursed to want what I couldn't have. 

Icould pull you behind one ofthose very elms, I thought. hook my thumbs beneath your bodice .. . Oh. Inside, I could do what I wanted. Bend her over her writing desk and kiss her breasts to my heart's ease. But outsideI was no one, nothing but a maid. Ipictured myselflooping a hurting fistful of nair around my hand. She took a step back. Now I begin to worry that it was me she feared after all.

She said no more, only sat forward, her back curved as a blade. A blade that should have finished me there and then, had it been merciful.

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