**Winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award** **Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022** ‘Oxblood shows us that there are few places literature can’t take us, if the writer is brave enough, and gifted enough’ FRANCIS SPUFFORD 'The master of northern noir' SUNDAY TIMES 'Brilliant' DENISE MINA 'An absolute triumph' GUARDIAN 'Powerful and so beautifully written' HARRIET TYCE, Sunday Times-bestselling author of BLOOD ORANGE ________________________________________________________________ Wythenshawe, South Manchester. 1985. The Dodds family once ruled Manchester’s underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby and the ghost of a murdered lover. Over the course of a few days, Nedra, Carol and Jan must each confront the true legacy of the men who have defined their lives; and seize the opportunity to break the cycle for good. _______________________________________________________________ ‘If I read a better novel than Oxblood in 2022, it’ll be a blinding year for fiction’ JOSEPH KNOX 'A propulsive, bountiful, fearless work of art' OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE 'One of the most powerful and urgent writers of our times' DAVID PEACE

**Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022** 'A rich archive of bygone badness' THE TIMES 'An absolute triumph: complex, haunting and powerful, this is a blazing tale of complicity, shame, love and hope' GUARDIAN 'Powerful and so beautifully written' HARRIET TYCE, Sunday Times-bestselling author of BLOOD ORANGE ________________________________________________________________ Wythenshawe, South Manchester. 1985. The Dodds family once ruled Manchester's underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby. Matriarch Nedra presides over the household, which bustles with activity as she prepares the welcome feast for her grandson Kelly's return from prison. Her grieving daughter-in-law Carol is visited by both the welcome, intimate ghost of her murdered lover, and by Mac, an ageing criminal enforcer, a man who may just offer her a real and possible future. And then there is Jan - the teenage tearaway running as fast as she can from her mother, her grandmother, and her own unnamed baby. Over the course of a few days, the Dodds women must each confront the true legacy of the men who have defined their lives; and seize the opportunity to break the cycle for good. A blistering portrait of a family on fire, Oxblood lays bare the horror of violence, the exile of grief, and the extraordinary power of love. _______________________________________________________________ 'If I read a better novel than Oxblood in 2022, it'll be a blinding year for fiction. Tom Benn, please take a bow. Everybody else, please take note' JOSEPH KNOX, author of No 1 international bestseller TRUE CRIME STORY 'Brilliant' DENISE MINA 'Confirms Tom Benn as one of the most powerful and urgent writers of our times' DAVID PEACE, author of the RED RIDING QUARTET 'An astonishing piece of work ... Exceptional' CATH STAINCLIFFE

The arrival of an assured and exhilarating new voice in literary crime fiction

It's Manchester, July 1996, the month after the IRA bomb, and the "Evening News" is carrying reports of two murders. On the front page is a glamorous Egyptian woman, a socialite, and heiress to an oil fortune, whose partially clothed body has been found in a basement. In the back pages there is a 50-word piece on the murder of a young prostitute found dumped on a roadside. For Henry Bane, fixer, loanshark and legman for one of Manchester's established ganglords, it's the second piece of news that hits hardest. Determined to find out what happened to his childhood sweetheart he searches his bombed city for answers, finding that these two stories belong on the same page, and that Bane's world belongs to others--those willing to profit from guns, human trafficking, and a Manchester in decay.

An electrifying noir novel about lost loves and stolen drugsIt's Manchester, 1998, and the funeral party for Henry Bane's father is interrupted by a woman from Bane's past. Roisin is back in his life after an eight-year absence, inconvenient for Jan, his latest flame. Roisin has brought a wounded boyfriend with her--and a lot more trouble is following them up north. Meanwhile, a Yardie who goes by the name of "Hagfish" wants to take over the local ganglords' territory with Mary, his terrifying weapon of choice. It's Hagfish against Bane in a new turf war: a war that will claim lives and cement vendettas. It's a conflict steeped in half-forgotten history: a history that Bane and Roisin are forever tied to--and which ties them together.