Description

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4
A SPECTATOR BEST OF THE YEAR – AS CHOSEN BY REVIEWERS

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. But when she turns sixteen, her father is murdered by men he thought were friends.

In a town where lawlessness prevails, Goody and her brother Francis must enter the cut-throat world of her father’s killers in order to find justice. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she discovers what life can be like without constraints or expectations, developing a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.

Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?

Publisher Review

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