'Beautifully written, dark, twisted and often funny' Charlotte Levin 'Dark and twisted, comic and toxic. I loved it!' Jenny Colgan 'Shocking and compelling. I raced through it. Fabulous' Daily Mail Ruth and Muriel are best friends. And often, worst enemies. Inseparable since they were little, Ruth and Muriel have shared everything. Now, fate has left them living together in a North London home, with Ruth caring for Muriel in her deteriorating health, playing Scrabble, arguing and making up, passing the days in monotony. Until one afternoon, when Muriel makes an unexpected and sinister announcement: ‘In exactly seventy-two hours, I am going to die’. The end might be in sight for Muriel, but that’s just the beginning of this story about two old friends who have seventy-two years of history – and more than one shocking secret – between them... A darkly comic novel about two old friends, a lifelong (toxic) friendship, and the very fine line between love and hate. Perfect for fans of Joanna Cannon, Charlotte Levin and Jennie Godfrey.

The darkly comic debut novel from Claire Parkin. A tale of toxic friends, lost love and deep seething resentment. For all the fans of Joanna Canon and Gail Honeyman.

"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions," begins The Girls of Slender Means, Dame Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club itself—"three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit"—its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal: practicing elocution, and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. The novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds. Chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the Best Modern Novels in the Sunday Times of London, The Girls of Slender Means is a taut and eerily perfect novel by an author The New York Times has called "one of this century's finest creators of comic-metaphysical entertainment."