Penance: A Novel

Written by Eliza Clark

Narrated by Hollie-Jay Bowes, Anna Gilthorpe, Emily Goldie and 3 more

One of Granta's Best Young British Novelists 2023 

“Eliza Clark’s writing embraces the socially unacceptable and wryly explores themes of gender, power, and violence.”—Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023

“Chilling, clever, and unputdownable.”—Guardian

From the author of the cult hit Boy Parts comes a chilling, brilliantly told story of murder among a group of teenage girls—a powerful and disturbing novel as piercing in its portrait of young women as Emma Cline’s The Girls.

On a beach in a run-down seaside town on the Yorkshire coastline, sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson is set on fire by three other schoolgirls.

Nearly a decade after the horrifying murder, journalist Alec Z. Carelli has written the definitive account of the crime, drawn from hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves. The result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.

But how much of the story is true?

Compulsively readable, provocative, and disturbing, Penance is a cleverly nuanced, unflinching exploration of gender, class, and power that raises troubling questions about the media and our obsession with true crime while bringing to light the depraved side of human nature and our darkest proclivities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Sep 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9780063327887

Eliza Clark

Eliza Clark is the co-creator of Foxfire Mountain House, an inn in the Catskills, NY, with her husband Tim. Formerly a television showrunner and writer, Eliza has had a lifelong passion for interior design, and her designs for Foxfire have been featured in Vogue, Domino, Elle, Remodelista, Apartment Therapy, House & Garden, Goop, and Condé Nast Traveler, among others. Tim Trojian is the co-creator of Foxfire Mountain House, an inn in the Catskills, NY, with his wife, Eliza. He has worked in kitchens for more than thirty years, and for the past several years has worked as an executive chef and Food & Beverage director. Fresh, seasonal, and locally produced with global influences from Korea to Sweden, Tim's dishes are inspired by the ingredients he finds. He secretly thrives on limitations and swears many of his best dishes came from cleaning out the fridge.

Reviews for Penance

[Ashton Atkins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good stuff! Honestly, I’m a true crime girlie and this really contextualized the pain of the survivors