The Little Friend

_______________ ‘In a literary age of diet and dearth, Tartt invites us to feast ... the opening tragedy strikes a note of rich, flamboyant Southern Gothic that resonates throughout' - Independent ‘You will rarely have read better ... Because of Tartt's mastery of suspense, this book will grip readers all the way through to its bitter end' - Guardian ‘Destined to become a special kind of classic - a book that precocious young readers pluck from their parents' shelves and devour with surreptitious eagerness, thrilled to discover a writer who seems at once to read their minds and to offer up the sweet-and-sour fruits of exotic, forbidden knowledge' - New York Times Book Review _______________ Donna Tartt's huge selling second novel, follow up to the worldwide bestseller The Secret History The sunlit rails gleamed like dark mercury, arteries branching out silver from the switch points; the old telegraph poles were shaggy with kudzu and Virginia creeper and, above them, rose the water tower, its surface all washed out by the sun. Harriet, cautiously, stepped towards it in the weedy clearing. Around and around it she walked, around the rusted metal legs. One day is never, ever discussed by the Cleve family. The day that nine-year-old Robin was found hanging by the neck from a tree in their front garden. Twelve years later the family are no nearer to uncovering the truth of what happened to him. Inspired by Houdini and Robert Louis Stevenson, twelve-year-old Harriet sets out to find her brother’s murderer – and punish him. But what starts out as a child's game soon becomes a dangerous journey into the menacing underworld of a small Mississippi town.

_______________ ‘In a literary age of diet and dearth, Tartt invites us to feast ... the opening tragedy strikes a note of rich, flamboyant Southern Gothic that resonates throughout' - Independent ‘You will rarely have read better ... Because of Tartt's mastery of suspense, this book will grip readers all the way through to its bitter end' - Guardian ‘Destined to become a special kind of classic - a book that precocious young readers pluck from their parents' shelves and devour with surreptitious eagerness, thrilled to discover a writer who seems at once to read their minds and to offer up the sweet-and-sour fruits of exotic, forbidden knowledge' - New York Times Book Review _______________ Donna Tartt's huge selling second novel, follow up to the worldwide bestseller The Secret History The sunlit rails gleamed like dark mercury, arteries branching out silver from the switch points; the old telegraph poles were shaggy with kudzu and Virginia creeper and, above them, rose the water tower, its surface all washed out by the sun. Harriet, cautiously, stepped towards it in the weedy clearing. Around and around it she walked, around the rusted metal legs. One day is never, ever discussed by the Cleve family. The day that nine-year-old Robin was found hanging by the neck from a tree in their front garden. Twelve years later the family are no nearer to uncovering the truth of what happened to him. Inspired by Houdini and Robert Louis Stevenson, twelve-year-old Harriet sets out to find her brother’s murderer – and punish him. But what starts out as a child's game soon becomes a dangerous journey into the menacing underworld of a small Mississippi town.

The second novel by Donna Tartt, bestselling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother's Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents' yard. Twelve years later Robin's murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin's sister Harriet--unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town's rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family's history of loss. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and "a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens" ( The New York Times Book Review ), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.

The second novel by Donna Tartt, bestselling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother's Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents' yard. Twelve years later Robin's murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin's sister Harriet--unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town's rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family's history of loss. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and "a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens" ( The New York Times Book Review ), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.