"Deep-diving, elegant + tough." —Margaret
Atwood via @MargaretAtwood
"By
turns lush, gritty, wry, gothic and compulsive, The Confessions of Frannie
Langton is a dazzling page-turner. With as much psychological savvy as
righteous wrath, Sara Collins twists together the slave narrative, bildungsroman, love story and crime
novel to make something new." —Emma
Donoghue
"A
startling, compelling historical debut novel. . . . Should be on top of your
vacation reading pile." —The Washington Post
"Reminiscent
of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. . . . [A] devious, richly detailed
debut." —O: The Oprah Magazine
A servant and former
slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing
historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid
streets of Georgian London—a remarkable literary debut with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad and The Paying Guest
All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of
the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and
his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly
following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the
killings and the mysterious woman being tried at the Old Bailey.
The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a
seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore.
But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened
that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn't know
how she came to be covered in the victims' blood. But she does have a tale to
tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship
under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events
that brought her into the Benhams' London home—and into a passionate and
forbidden relationship.
Though Frannie's testimony may seal her conviction,
the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict
the whole of English society itself.
The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a breathtaking debut: a murder mystery that travels across the
Atlantic and through the darkest channels of history. A brilliant, searing
depiction of race, class and oppression that penetrates the skin and sears the
soul, it is the story of a woman of her own making in a world that would see
her unmade.
