The Amber Fury

*** From the bestselling author of Stone Blind and A Thousand Ships ***





When you open up, who will you let in?



Alex Morris has lost everything: her relationship, her career and her faith in the future. Moving to Edinburgh to escape her demons, Alex takes a job teaching at a Pupil Referral Unit. It's a place for kids whose behaviour is so extreme that they cannot be taught in a regular classroom.



Alex is fragile with grief and way out of her depth. Her fourth-year students are troubled and violent. Desperate to reach them, Alex turns to the stories she knows best. Greek tragedy isn't the most obvious way to win over such damaged children, yet these tales of fate, family and vengeance speak directly to them.



Enthralled by the bloodthirsty justice of the ancient world, the teenagers begin to weave the threads of their own tragedy - one that Alex watches, helpless to prevent.



Natalie Haynes is a writer, broadcaster, reviewer and classicist. She was once a stand-up comic, but retired when she realised she preferred tragedy to comedy. Always keen to be paid for what she would be reading anyway, she judged the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2010, The Women's Prize for Fiction in 2012, and the Man Booker Prize in 2013. The Amber Fury is her first novel.



Haynes' debut is not only a gripping thriller, but also a beautifully drawn portrait of grief and how we find our way back to life. I loved it.



A handsomely structured psychological mystery, and a moving exploration of grief



I stayed up all night to finish The Amber Fury. It's gripping and compelling, a real page-turner, written with humanity and warmth



A gripping first novel...impossible to put down.



Compelling, wise, compassionate, and devastating, Natalie Haynes' masterfully-wrought drama of rage, loss and redemption stirs both contemplation and tears. Her debut marks the arrival of a forceful, thrilling new talent



Gripping and elegiac, funny and achingly sad, Haynes' tale pulls you along like a river to the falls. Hypnotic