The Shining Girls

A Novel

By Lauren Beukes (Hardcover Book, 2013)

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST.

The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own."

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He's the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth . . .

THE SHINING GIRLS is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal.

Full Description

Buy This Book

- Format: Hardcover Book
- Price: $26.00 US/$29.00 CAN
- ISBN-13: 9780316216852
- On Sale Date: 06/04/2013
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Full Details
Formats Available: Hardcover Book, Trade Paperback, Electronic Book, Audiobook, Hardcover Book, Audiobook
Newsletter

Don't miss updates about our authors, including book tour info and new book releases.

Sign Up

Audiobook Excerpt

Lauren Beukes is the author of the acclaimed novels Moxyland and Zoo City. She is a recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, finished runner-up to Lev Grossman for the John W Campbell Award, was shortlisted for a plethora of other awards and received rave reviews from around the world including The New York Times and The Guardian. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her husband and her daughter.

"A grisly crime thriller meets sci-fi action meets historical fiction in a wildly inventive summer page-turner." (Entertainment Weekly).
"The premise is pure Stephen King, but Beukes gives it an intricate, lyrical treatment all her own." (Time).
"A powerful thriller ... imaginative, disturbing, compelling, tense ... compelling reading. Beukes commands her material with persuasive skill." (The Times (UK)).
"Beukes has enormous fun with the concept ... an entertaining novel that will be read with keen attention." (The Guardian (UK)).
"THE SHINING GIRLS is utterly original, beautifully written, and I must say, it creeped the holy bejasus out of me. This is something special." (Tana French).
"A tremendous work of suspense fiction. What's more, it's a fabulous piece of both time-travel and serial killer fiction, using the intersection of those two themes to explore questions of free will, predestination, and causality in a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise." (Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing).
"I loved THE SHINING GIRLS. It really is a new kind of thriller, sitting somewhere between The Time Traveller's Wife and The Silence of The Lambs. A dark, relentless, time-twisting, page-turning murder story guaranteed to give you heart palpitations. It shines." (Matt Haig, author of The Radleys).
"A tremendous work of suspense fiction... a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise." (Cory Doctorow).
"THE SHINING GIRLS is enthralling and dazzlingly inventive. Lauren Beukes risks everything with a startlingly original structure, that's perfectly executed. A huge accomplishment."

(Deon Meyer).
"Very smart...completely kick-ass. Beukes' handling of the joints between the realistic and the fantastic is masterful, and those are always my favorite parts, in this kind of story. Not the weirdness (which is itself superb here, and very ample) but the segue to it. The liminal instant." (William Gibson).
"Imagine Poe and Steinbeck in a knife fight where Poe wins and writes Jack the Ripper's version of The Grapes of Wrath. Lauren Beukes's THE SHINING GIRLS is even scarier than that."

(Richard Kadrey).
PRAISE FOR LAUREN BEUKES:

"The world Beukes has invented is both eerily familiar and creepily different." (Cosmopolitan, on Moxyland).
"An extremely promising writer." (Cory Doctorow).
"Intriguing characters and big ideas." (GQ, on Moxyland).
"Beukes's energetic noir crackles with original ideas." (Jeff Vandermeer).
"Lauren Beukes is Jeff Noon crossed with Raymond Chandler." (Paul Cornell).