Crooked Heart - Tapa dura

"Prepare to be charmed, amused and moved . . . A complete delight" (January Book Club Pick Mail on Sunday)

"Dazzling...a miniature masterpiece of serio-comic writing...A dark comedy, moving between drollery, pathos, farce and harrowing moments of tragic insight" (Guardian)

"I loved this book - Lissa Evans is a wonderful writer; Vee and Noel are utter originals, and their journey made me laugh and cry" (JoJo Moyes)

"Wonderfully vivid and eccentric...there's a good dash of sharp comedy to offset the heart-warming stuff" (Kate Saunders The Times)

"A fabulous novel about the relationship between ten-year-old Noel and his unscrupulous but endearing foster mother, Vee Sedge" (January Book Club Pick Woman & Home)

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, 2015

When Noel Bostock – aged ten, no family - is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he ends up living in St Albans with Vera Sedge - thirty-six and drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it.

Noel’s mourning his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette. Brought up to share her disdain for authority and eclectic approach to education, he has little in common with other children and even less with Vee, who hurtles impulsively from one self-made crisis to the next. The war’s thrown up new opportunities for making money but what Vee needs (and what she’s never had) is a cool head and the ability to make a plan.

On her own, she’s a disaster. With Noel, she’s a team.

Together they cook up an idea. Criss-crossing the bombed suburbs of London, Vee starts to make a profit and Noel begins to regain his interest in life.

But there are plenty of other people making money out of the war and some of them are dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all...