Harriet Lane’s debut Alys, Always was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and shortlisted for the
Writers’ Guild Best Fiction Book Award. Her second novel Her, a Waterstones Book Club pick, was shortlisted for the Encore Award for best second novel.
Harriet’s third novel, Other People’s Fun, will be published in October 2025 by W&N (UK) and Little, Brown (US).
Info from W&N:
‘I look. I can’t stop looking. That’s the deal, isn’t it? We all know that’s how it works. If someone wants to be seen — and oh, how they want to be seen — then someone has to watch.’
Ruth is alone, unnoticed and at a loss: her marriage has ended, her daughter is leaving home and her job is leading nowhere. But luckily Sookie is back in her life — vivid, self-assured Sookie, who never spared the time for Ruth when they were teenagers, but who now seems to want to be friends.
What could possibly go wrong? As Ruth is caught up in Sookie’s life, she sees that everything is not as simple and Instagrammable as Sookie would have you believe.
But what has that got to do with Ruth, and what can she do about it?
Unputdownable, funny, spiky and subtle, Other People’s Fun is a novel about modern life and the lies we tell our neighbours, friends, families and selves through the hall of mirrors that is social media.
Filled with Harriet Lane’s trademark creeping unease and forensic observation, this marks the long-awaited return of the mistress of literary suspense.
Lucinda Coxon’s stage adaptation of Alys, Always, directed by Nicholas Hytner, opens at London’s Bridge Theatre in February 2019. The cast includes Joanne Froggatt and Robert Glenister.
More information here
Her gets a delicious new look for its US paperback release
Her has been shortlisted for the Encore Award for best second novel
‘A new generation of female suspense novelists — writers like Megan Abbott, Tana French, Harriet Lane and Gillian Flynn — are redefining contemporary crime fiction with character-driven narratives that defy genre conventions. Their novels dig into social issues, feature complex women who aren’t purely victims or vixens, and create suspense with subtle psychological developments and shifts in relationships instead of procedural plot points and car chases.’ Alexandra Alter, New York Times
‘I wrote myself a purpose. I wrote myself back into the world. To find this fantastic new freedom has been an amazing surprise, one of the great true surprises of my adult life.’
For The Atlantic’s By Heart slot, Harriet spoke to Joe Fassler about Larkin, the relationship between fear and fiction, and the power of ambiguity in art. You can find the piece here
‘You won’t find any bodies down alleyways in Her or Alys, Always. You won’t find any bodies, come to that. No police tape strung across doors, no screwed-up detectives drinking bad coffee, no alibis that come unstuck at the eleventh hour. Just people living apparently unremarkable lives: going to the office or the supermarket, having people over for supper, taking the kids to the swings.
The thrill for me has been discovering an undercurrent of unease beneath all this: the potential for catastrophe in the domestic, the commonplace, the everyday.’
Her is a Waterstones Book Club pick for spring. You can find Harriet’s piece for the Waterstones blog here
‘I’m not at all interested in stitching it all up neatly for my readers. I like an engaged reader, and that’s the sort I write for: someone who wants the clues and wants to assemble their own answer.’ You can find Megan Labrise’s interview with Harriet here
‘Journalism is about conveying information clearly and efficiently; but when I’m writing fiction I love the fact that you can allow the story to appear very gradually, incrementally, maybe at the far edge of the reader’s vision. There’s something so luxurious about that. The lack of hurry. The playfulness of it. My books are nothing without an alert, observant reader.’
More here
‘Eventually reality overshadows the horror, but I know the horror is there. And I’m sure that has something to do with the sort of books that I write. There’s the surface, and then there’s something underneath. And it does feel very real to me, the scariness.’
Harriet discusses Her with Kevin Nance here