Description

‘If you read only one thriller this year; make it this one’ Daily Mail
‘Gob-smackingly, heart-stoppingly, breath-holdingly brilliant’ Ruth Jones

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THREE HOURS TO SAVE THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE

In rural Somerset in the middle of a blizzard, the unthinkable happens: a school is under siege.

Pupils and teachers barricade themselves into classrooms, the library, the theatre. The headmaster lies wounded in the library, unable to help his trapped students and staff. Outside, a police psychiatrist must identify the gunmen, while parents gather desperate for news.

In three intense hours, all must find the courage to stand up to evil and save the people they love.

A TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
THE TIMES THRILLER OF THE YEAR
A BEST BOOK OF 2020 IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, TIMES, GUARDIAN, MAIL, MIRROR, LITERARY REVIEW, STYLIST, RED AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
A TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES THRILLER OF THE MONTH
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‘Brilliant’ Lee Child, Better off Dead

‘A brave, timely and intricately crafted work’ Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters

‘Superb’ Kate Mosse, The City of Tears

‘It’s beautifully, elegantly written, SO gripping, intelligent, timely, affecting and moving’ Marian Keyes, Again, Rachel

‘A brilliant literary thriller… moving, masterly’ Sunday Times

‘Kept us on the edge of our seats from start to finish’ Independent

‘A novel that you live rather than merely read’ Daily Telegraph

‘Amazing’ Davina McCall, Menopausing

‘An electrifying, pulse-racing novel’ Red

‘Wow! This is a stunner of a book, staggeringly good’ Jane Fallon, Just Got Real

‘An emotionally devastating and beautifully observed literary thriller’ Observer

‘Astonishing, powerful, terrifying, heartbreaking’ Emma Flint, Little Deaths

‘Intersperses scenes of breath-sucking tension with stirring meditations on human nature’ Guardian

Publisher Review

Three Hours is one of the most exhilarating reading experiences I've ever had. Rosamund Lupton takes a dark, painful subject and turns it into a novel full of hope and compassion. An amazing achievement. -- Emma Healey, bestselling author of 'Elizabeth is Missing' and 'Whistle in the Dark' Devastatingly good, and announces the arrival of a truly original talent * Daily Mail on 'Sister' * Like Kate Atkinson, Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell * New York Times on 'Sister' * Like a breath of icy air. . . Not since Smilla's Feeling for Snow have I shivered like this. -- Emma Donoghue on 'The Quality of Silence' I've just finished reading this. Exceptional - so well planned and written. I'm also in awe of Rosamund Lupton -- Sarah Edghill Three Hours has a voice all of its own. Character and plot leap out at you from the first line. Rosamund Lupton makes you race through the pages with her irresistible storytelling. Impossible to stop until you reach the poignant end! -- Jane Corry Lupton tells her story with searing beauty and unbearable tension. Exquisite. Compassionate. Painful. Fantastic. A work of powerful imagination that wears its intelligence lightly. Absolutely terrifying and nail-biting. Don't read this if you want to be able to put it down. -- Kate London Three Hoursis a brilliant novel - moving, relevant and honest. Rosamund Lupton takes us through the story of a siege in an English school, building on the tension and our emotions as the story speeds to its conclusion. She handles difficult subjects with sensitivity and intelligence, focusing on the heroism of the individual. An exceptional and heartbreaking read -- Jenny Quintana I finished Three Hoursin the wee small hours of this morning. It's mind blowing. I'm still feeling jittery. It's so fast-paced and credible that at times I felt like I was watching rolling news coverage of a real incident where I knew the victims. I had that same pulse-racing, queasy feeling - the same inability to look away. It's a horrifying story but told with such compassion and humanity. A large cast of characters and yet you feel genuinely emotionally engaged with each one... Amazing -- Francesca Jakobi Beautifully written, emotionally note-perfect and nail-bitingly tense. It's BRILLIANT -- Tammy Cohen Three Hours is about hate crime, but what rings out from its pages - what is likely to stay with you long after you've read that magnificent last line - is love. I wanted to read Three Hours slowly to savour every beautiful word, yet it is so compelling that I couldn't put it down. This one is destined for the best-sellers list, I reckon, and rightly so. It is phenomenal -- Fiona Mitchell I read Three Hours in two days, in awe. It's breathtaking. A modern rumination on the issues that divide 21st century life, a celebration of refugees, of mental health, of love and hope and bravery. I loved it more than I can say' -- Gillian McAllister This is an incredible novel: a heady combination of elegant writing, nuanced characterisation, deep emotion and heart-stopping tension. I was torn, all the way through, between wanting to slow down in order to relish the detail, and wanting to speed up in order to find out what was going to happen' -- Elizabeth Brooks An incredible, unbelievably powerful book... I forgot how to breathe as it explored what it means to be human - for better or for worse. It's taut, it's tight, it's appalling, it's uplifting, it's extraordinary. Simply stunning -- Dinah Jefferies Three Hours is Rosamund Lupton's best book yet, and that is high praise. A monster story for our fractious historical moment -- the age of the internet and of Columbine, of terror and mass migration -- when the monsters often look an awful lot like our own children. Chilling, suspenseful, humane, and brave -- William Landay There's no one else writing quite like Rosamund Lupton in fiction today - the way she combines high tension with a compassionate and humane take on the world is unique. Three Hours is exceptional - at turns heart-breaking, warm, terrifying, perceptive and grippingly page turning -- Kate Hamer It's beautifully, elegantly written, SO gripping, intelligent, timely, affecting and moving -- Marian Keyes ASTONISHING. Powerful, terrifying, heartbreaking Wow! This is a stunner of a book. Staggeringly good -- Jane Fallon Three Hours is both a gripping thriller and a beautiful meditation on the nature of family, friendship, courage and unintended - lethal - consequences. Superb.