A small town is just a jail with no bars. Trapped, always watched, always watching, and the question is: are you the jailer, or the inmate?

In Abernathy, Claire Patel-Campbell's debut novel, you're dropped into Small Town America: which could be small-town England; small-town anywhere. You feel the frost in your bones, your breath freezes, and you shiver with dread. You become one with the residents: walk the same streets, drink the same bad coffee, and feel as claustrophobic, or as powerful, as one can in a tiny town with secrets.

It all starts with a body, frozen in the snow. Who she is, and why she came to be there, will be the plucked thread that may cause the whole town to unravel.


"I fell into the story and the characters: there is a swiftly developing complexity and a feel of disaster that is compelling. There is that sense of anarchy about it which I think is one of the markers of Americanness. Always odd that a country so dominated by legalities should feel so lawless."

Alan Smith, author of Her Majesty's Philosophers