A Narrow Door

A Novel

Joanne Harris

An electrifying tale of psychological suspense and revenge at an elite grammar school where secrets run deep.

"A dark world of emotional complexity and betrayal, where twist follows twist and nothing is what it seems."—Alex Michaelides, bestselling author of The Silent Patient

"Exhilarating. Addictive. Fierce."—Bridget Collins, bestselling author of The Binding

"A psychological thriller you can't put down and an antiheroine you won't forget."—Harlan Coben

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Now I'm in charge, the gates are my gates. The rules are my rules.

It's an incendiary moment for St Oswald's school. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls.

Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely forty, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.

But Rebecca is here to make her mark. She'll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before. After all, you can't keep a good woman down.

Joanne Harris is the internationally renowned and award-winning author of eighteen novels, plus novellas, scripts, short stories, libretti, lyrics, and articles. Her novel Chocolat was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and is Chair of the Society of Authors.  She lives in Yorkshire and also has a form of synaesthesia which enables her to smell colours. Red, she says, smells of chocolate. Follow her on Twitter @joannechocolat.

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Endorsements & Reviews

"Harris keeps the suspense high all the way to the exhilarating ending. This spectacular feat of storytelling will seduce the reader from page one." Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Joanne Harris’s previous novels set at the tweedy British boarding school St. Oswald’s embodied the spirit of a fierce chess match. The icy rage and ruthless revenge is turned up even higher in A Narrow Door, in which St. Oswald’s, long a boys-only domain, is dragged into the current century with the appointment of its first headmistress in its 500-year-old existence. To the chagrin of the elderly Latin master Roy Straitley, Rebecca Buckfast’s arrival not only portends change, it leads to the excavation of secrets from St. Oswald’s depths — namely, the literal unearthing of a long-buried body. Readers will learn the dead person’s identity, but the novel’s most shocking revelations have to do with the loss of one woman’s agency and the means, however terrible, even monstrous, through which she can reclaim it." Sarah Weinman New York Times Book Review