In Falls Landing, Florida – a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers – something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher’s daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they uncover will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

An impressive [read], thanks to Tate’s almost frightening powers of description. It has been a long time since I read a novel that so viscerally evoked a feeling of place… it’s the America of Nabokov’s Lolita on acid… With its plot twists, grotesque horror and cartoonish villains, Brutes is a novel that refuses to be reasonable. That’s part of its unsettling charm… An astonishing debut that will burrow under your skin. ― Sunday Times

[A] magic realist, warped Florid a fairy tale, a Lynchian reinterpretation of The Virgin Suicides… Tate acutely captures the precariousness of girlhood, its growing pains and what it is to be “born out of rage”. ― Observer

A brooding look at girlhood like you’ve never encountered before. ― Evening Standard

The literary debut of the season. ― Vogue

Polyphonically technicolour and lushly textured, Brutes is a defiant elegy to the myth of girlhood innocence. Dizz Tate’s talent is brazen – and brilliant. — Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure

Assured, insightful, quietly savage, Dizz Tate is capable of conjuring a whole world. — Nicole Flattery, author of Show Them a Good Time

Tate has talent in spades. ― Guardian

An impressive, atmospheric debut, told with stylish ferocity. ― The Skinny

A haunting debut. ― Elle