How far would you go to protect your child?
When tragedy strikes in a small Scottish village, everyone in the community is affected.

Most people believe one child is to blame for what happened.

But could a little boy really be responsible? And what lengths will his parents go to protect him?

THE WRONG CHILD is the most thought-provoking novel of 2018, perfect for fans of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN by Lionel Shriver and MY ABSOLUTE DARLING by Gabriel Tallent.

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READERS ARE CALLING THE WRONG CHILD 'UNFORGETTABLE':

'Amazing' - Amazon 5* review

'A great page-turner!' Amazon 5* review

'Hopefully it will receive the wider audience it so richly deserves' - Amazon 5* review

'Challenges your notions and ideals of morality' - Amazon review

'Will stick with you long after you finish it!' Amazon review

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What the critics are saying about THE WRONG CHILD:

'A thought-provoking read' - THE SUN

'Genuinely gripping' - THE HERALD

'A study of guilt and grief' - DAILY MAIL

'Brilliant, but dark as hell' - METRO

'Astonishing' - PSYCHOLOGIES

'So visceral it seeps into your pores' - DAILY RECORD

'Stunning. Macabre, unsettling and beautifully poetic' - BRIAN CONAGHAN, Costa Award winning author

When twenty-one of its twenty-two children die in an accident, an entire community turns on the sole survivor: the 'wrong child'. A must-read for fans of THE BAD SEED by William March, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN and WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by Shirley Jackson.

About the Author
Barry Gornell was born in Liverpool and now lives on the West Coast of Scotland. He is a novelist/screenwriter, ex fire-fighter, truck driver and bookshop manager. His short films Sonny's Pride and The Race were broadcast on STV. Graduating from the University of Glasgow Creative Writing Masters programme in 2008, he was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Bursary in 2009. His short fiction has been published in The Herald newspaper, Let's Pretend, 37 stories about (in)fidelity, Gutter 03 and Gutter 04. The Healing of Luther Grove was his first novel followed by The Wrong Child, which was originally published by Scottish press Freight Books in 2016.

Reviews

Reviews of the most thought-provoking thriller of the year, for fans of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN by Lionel Shriver, BIG LITTLE LIES by Liane Moriarty and MY ABSOLUTE DARLING by Gabriel Tallent:

'Brilliant, but as dark as hell. The British version of Daniel Woodrell'

* METRO *
A very thought-provoking read * THE SUN *
God, this is dark. A study of guilt and grief * DAILY MAIL *
A deeply unsettling tale of loss, abandonment and revenge * THE LIST *
[Gornell's] admirable single-mindedness and cool nerve are allied to a highly developed prose style which effectively conjures up a mood of darkness, intense cold and moral ambiguity - one in which nature itself feels complicit in the actions of the people. It is genuinely gripping * THE HERALD *
The Wrong Child is a startling and uncompromising story of grief and anger, of abandonment and decay. It's intense - darker than dark - but also original and beautiful * HELEN FITZGERALD, author of Viral, Dead Lovely and The Cry *
[An] uncompromising story of grief, anger, abandonment and decay * SCOTS MAGAZINE *
Stunning. Macabre, unsettling and beautifully poetic * BRIAN CONAGHAN, Costa Award winning author of THE BOMBS THAT BROUGHT US TOGETHER *



Book Information
ISBN 9781409171812
Author Barry Gornell
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
Publisher Orion Publishing Co
Weight(grams) 292g
Dimensions(mm) 215mm * 136mm * 20mm