Cold Light

August 27, 2012
Set in a small English town, Ashworthâs second novel (after A Kind of Intimacy) offers an object lesson in the perils of concealing the past. For ten years, twenty-something Laura has kept mum about at least one dreadful secret: What really happened when her best friend Chloe drowned at age 14. The knowledge has crippled Lauraâs hopes for a meaningful life. She holds a menial job as a shopping center cleaner and lives alone, fearful that mutual friend Emma might expose her. In her first-person recollections of the fateful months preceding Chloeâs death, Laura dwellsâperhaps overmuchâon the minute details of her angst-ridden adolescence. Ashworth pulls no punches. Though some of the dark, British humor may be lost on an American audience, the authorâs narrative is revealing, timely, and damning of tabloid-media sensationalism. Agent: Anthony Goff, David Highham Associates.

October 15, 2011

Ten years after teenagers Chloe and Carol died in a suicide pact, the ground is finally being broken for their memorial--and another body is found. Compared to Tana French and Kate Atkinson, Betty Trask Award winner Ashworth offers a twisty thriller. With a 100,000-copy first printing; feeling good about this one.

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