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We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

UK Publisher: Chatto & Windus

A gut-punch novel of girlhood in early noughties Yorkshire from a blazing new voice.

Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punch line of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.

But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. They shared everything, from blagging their way into nightclubs and trips to the FP (Family Planning) when they’re late. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin charting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace ― their friendship as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.

Written in a Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh takes you by the hand and drags you through Doncaster’s schoolyards, alleyways and nightclubs, bringing back the intimate treachery of adolescence and how we betray ourselves when we don’t trust our friends. Like The Glorious Heresies and Shuggie Bain, it tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked and forgotten place into the very centre of the world.

Colwill Brown was born and raised in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, though is now based in the US.  She holds an...