Description

Book Synopsis
1960. The height of the Cold War. Maths prodigy Ginny Matlock is appointed to be the first woman computer at a secretive nuclear testing facility off the East Anglian coast. She quickly finds, in this landscape of endless skies and shifting shorelines, that nothing is what it seems. What is the terrible secret of Briar Cottage? What dark tale haunts the local pub? And who is the mysterious Artist with whom Ginny's fate becomes entangled? As the Berlin Wall rises and nuclear Armageddon threatens in Cuba, can Ginny build a life for herself among so many mysteries or will the terrors of the age suck her under? Sarah Bower's brilliant novella blows the spy thriller genre to pieces and creates a feminist masterpiece from what is left of the rubble. A swirling mystery in which mathematical proof is always just out of reach. Lines and Shadows is the strange lovechild between Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent and John Le Carre.

Trade Review
'Lines and Shadows is a rich beauty of a novella - part love story, part thriller, with an undertow of the uncanny.' (Heather Richardson, author of A Dress for Kathleen)

Lines and Shadows

    Product form

    A Paperback / softback by Sarah Bower

    £12.00

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    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Wed 28 Oct 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Story Machine
      Published 6 August 2023
      ISBN-13 9781912665273
      978-1912665273
      ISBN-10 1912665271
      Also in:
      Contemporary Fiction

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      1960. The height of the Cold War. Maths prodigy Ginny Matlock is appointed to be the first woman computer at a secretive nuclear testing facility off the East Anglian coast. She quickly finds, in this landscape of endless skies and shifting shorelines, that nothing is what it seems. What is the terrible secret of Briar Cottage? What dark tale haunts the local pub? And who is the mysterious Artist with whom Ginny's fate becomes entangled? As the Berlin Wall rises and nuclear Armageddon threatens in Cuba, can Ginny build a life for herself among so many mysteries or will the terrors of the age suck her under? Sarah Bower's brilliant novella blows the spy thriller genre to pieces and creates a feminist masterpiece from what is left of the rubble. A swirling mystery in which mathematical proof is always just out of reach. Lines and Shadows is the strange lovechild between Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent and John Le Carre.

      Trade Review
      'Lines and Shadows is a rich beauty of a novella - part love story, part thriller, with an undertow of the uncanny.' (Heather Richardson, author of A Dress for Kathleen)

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