Girls of Little Hope by Sam Beckbessinger and Dale Halvorsen is out in June from Jonathan Ball Publishers.

‘Sharp as a DIY-piercing, with a fierce punk heart – I loved the hell out of this.’ – Lauren Beukes

‘A dark, strange, and joyful book about sticking by your best friends in the face of a monstrous world.’ – Sam Humphries

‘Girls of Little Hope is a tremendously confident, thrilling debut … I stayed up all night to finish it.’ – Alex de Campi

Three girls went into the woods. Only two came back, covered in blood and with no memory of what happened.

Being 15 is tough, tougher when you live in a boring-ass small town like Little Hope, California (population 8,302) in 1996. Donna, Rae and Kat keep each other sane with the fervor of teen girl friendships, zine-making and some amateur sleuthing into the town’s most enduring mysteries: a lost gold mine, and why little Ronnie Gaskins burned his parents alive a decade ago.

Their hunt will lead them to a hidden cave from which only two of them return alive. Donna the troublemaker can’t remember anything. Rae seems to be trying to escape her memories of what happened, while her close-minded religious family presses her for answers. And Kat? Sweet, wannabe writer Kat who rebelled against her mom’s beauty pageant dreams by getting fat? She’s missing. Dead. Or terribly traumatised, out there in the woods, alone.

As the police circle and Kat’s frantic mother Marybeth starts doing some investigating of her own, Rae and Donna will have to return to the cave where they discover a secret so shattering that no-one who encounters it will ever be the same.

About the authors

Sam Beckbessinger is the bestselling author of Manage Your Money Like a Fucking Grownup (over 70,000 copies sold). Her interactive story about climate change, Survive the Century, was featured in New Scientist and Gizmodo, and she was one of the writers on Realm and Marvel’s Jessica Jones: Playing With Fire serialised novel. She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University. She grew up on a farm near Durban, but now lives in London in the United Kingdom.

Dale Halvorsen co-created the Vertigo Comics horror series Survivors’ Club, along with Lauren Beukes and Ryan Kelly. He collaborated with Beukes and Carlos Ezquerra on the one-shot Durham Red and Strontium Dog comic for 2000AD and CHUM in Strange Sports Stories for DC Comics. He is also an international award-winning book cover designer, graphic designer and illustrator. Proudly autistic. He lives in Cape Town.

Categories Fiction International South Africa

Tags Dale Halvorsen Girls of Little Hope Jonathan Ball Publishers New books New releases Sam Beckbessinger