Description

‘Luminously unsettling’ – The Observer
‘A deeply thrilling and emotionally rich page-turner’ – Lucy Clarke
‘A wholly original and immersive thriller’ – Harriet Evans

Every shadow hides a secret.

One cold winter’s morning, Birdie wakes to the news she’s been waiting eighteen years to hear: Jimmy Maguire – the man who murdered her sister – is out of prison.

She sends her children to school, finds the gun she’s kept hidden all this time, and leaves for London, determined to find Jimmy and make him pay. But there’s another side to this story and nothing is at it seems. Birdie is about to enter a world of family secrets, worn-out loyalties and long-buried betrayals.

Gripping, emotional, and charged with tension, The Sunshine Man is a powerful story of reckoning, set against the haunting beauty of rural Devon, from bestselling author Emma Stonex.

READERS LOVE THE SUNSHINE MAN
‘A compelling tight thriller with heart’ *****
‘Hits you right between the eyes’ *****
‘Brilliantly written with twists and turns’ *****

Publisher Review

A remarkable novel – heart-wrenching, unflinching and deeply compassionate. The prose is luminous – always vibrant and original, often very beautiful – as the story delves deep into the respective pasts of the two very different protagonists, before building to a thrilling, and incredibly moving, climax. If you loved The Lamplighters, I guarantee you’ll love The Sunshine Man too. Me? I adored it. — Emylia Hall, author of The Shell House Detectives Masterful. Not only suspenseful and exquisitely tense but a nuanced, humanely observed portrait of grief and trauma. The setting and haunting atmosphere are beautifully evoked with subtle, real-feeling period detail. A personal, granular exploration of big questions – crime and justice, grace and revenge – that will stay with you long after the story has reached its unexpected conclusion. A triumph. — Jo Harkin, author of The Pretender The Sunshine Man is a masterful literary thriller. Stonex’s exquisite line by line writing lifts this dark tale into the light, and provokes nuanced thinking about revenge and redemption. A deeply thrilling and emotionally rich page-turner. One of my books of the year. — Lucy Clarke, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Castaways and One of the Girls A brilliantly accomplished story of fractured lives and the long-term reverberations of violent crime, The Sunshine Man is both quietly poetic and fiendishly gripping. Stonex’s prose is bruising and beautiful and her complex cast of characters asks confronting and important questions from the first page to the dramatic finale. I will be thinking about this nuanced and compelling novel for a very long time. — Rosie Walsh, author of The Man Who Didn’t Call Spellbinding and beautifully written, The Sunshine Man transcends genre. It’s an unbearably tense thriller and a nuanced examination of fractured lives, grief and trauma. Told in glittering and poetic prose with an impeccable sense of place, this is a granular exploration of big questions – revenge, love and redemption. I —ing loved it! — Nikki May, author of Wahala and This Motherless Land The Sunshine Man is, firstly, a compelling and masterful thriller – with a loaded gun, a car chase and a woman set on revenge. But it’s also a study of childhood trauma – and a compassionate tale of grief, resilience, love and absolution. It is an accomplished, dark and masterful successor to the bestselling The Lamplighters. I will be thinking about this book – and its affecting ending – for a long time to come. — Susan Fletcher, author of The Night in Question