Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Crime & mystery fiction

RADIANT HEAT

Sarah-Jane Collins

When a woman's home is suddenly destroyed in a wildfire, she thinks she is lucky to have survived... until she finds a dead woman in her driveway, clutching a piece of paper with her name on it.

Alison is alive. She survived the night on the damp tiles of her bathroom, her entire body swaddled in a thick wet woolen blanket. The fires crackled around her, the bitter char of eucalypt settling in the back of her throat. The sudden wildfire had destroyed nearly her entire neighborhood, and when Alison creeps out of her hiding place, she spots a soot-covered cherry car in her driveway, and in the passenger seat, a woman. She searches the woman's bag. An ID: Simone Arnold. A piece of paper: Alison's full name and address. But why?

Radiant Heat follows Alison's search for answers across the country, from the fire-ravaged bushlands of Australia's interior to the coastal byways between Sydney and Melbourne, and north to tropical Cairns, exploring the loopholes of memory and time, the chasms in her relationships, the threats of toxic masculinity, and the haunting choices we must make, all against the rising consequences of nature's fury.

For watchers of Mare of Eastown, Unbelievable, True Detective; and readers of Jane Harper and Tana French. This is a debut novel, 2nd novel tentatively scheduled for January 2025.

Sarah-Jane Collins is a writer, editor and journalist from Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia, who moved to New York by way of Djubuguli (Sydney), and Narrm (Melbourne). Her work has appeared in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin and Overland journals, and others. She has an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her fiction has won the Overland Fair Australia prize, and been shortlisted for others. Although New York is home now, she misses the beaches of Australia, but not the spiders.

Available products
Book Published 2024-01-01 by Berkley Hardcover
Book Published 2024-01-01 by Berkley Hardcover

Comments

A vivid and propulsive novel that shimmers with the heat and intensity of the Australian bush, where the lingering threat of violence hangs over the raw, visceral beauty of the landscape. Collins has crafted an unforgettable tale of survival, resilience, and community in the aftermath of personal and collective grief. Radiant Heat is a thrillingly suspenseful, heartbreaking and ultimately exhilarating read.

Fans of Tana French and Jane Harper will enjoy Sarah-Jane Collins' excellent debut thriller, Radiant Heat. It boasts a rich setting and a complex, well-drawn heroine, but it's the quality of Collins' prose that sets this book apart from other entries in the genre. A huge accomplishment, and a delight to read.

A sense of blooming dread, and the deft, finely painted lines of an artist at work. This close and claustrophobic mystery captures something important about disaster - the way it can crest a hill and we find ourselves woefully unprepared. A finely observed and utterly compulsive read.

A searing, gorgeous novel twisting and turning with obsession, grief, fear, and survival. Collins' writing is as fierce as it is thoughtful. You'll feel the blistering air in your lungs and the scorched earth beneath your feet. Radiant Heat will haunt you, long after the last page.

A spectacular novel about survival, grief, and strength, Radiant Heat cuts to the heart of what it takes for one woman to live beyond immeasurable personal and collective violence. Here is a haunting, heart-rending mystery that moves with such breathtaking grace and force, it carries the unstoppable spread of fire itself.

Riveting. Smoldering. Chilling. By weaving a psychological thriller into a backdrop of ecological disaster, Collins ingeniously captures how the most intimate betrayals produce trauma of planetary dimensions. Radiant Heat scalds in the way only honest fiction can.

Radiant Heat is sharp, intense and propulsive. Sarah-Jane Collins weaves a story of environmental catastrophe and its aftermath with a compelling mystery that raises meaningful questions about the world and the self. An impressive debut.

Atmospheric and gut-wrenching, Radiant Heat crackles with electricity. Collins has woven a masterful tale of grief and revenge and the vulnerability of our lives battling against the force of the elements, both within ourselves and outside.

Gripping from the first page, this tale of destruction, survival, and mysteries uncovered in the ashes kept me up late into the night.

Sarah Jane-Collins's Radiant Heat is a smart, gripping thriller that deftly draws a connection between violences both personal and ecological. Radiant Heat is a scorching page-turner.

Collins writes with incredible pace and precision, knowing exactly when to bring tension to a roiling boil and when to lower it to a suspenseful simmer. Radiant Heat will hook you with its lively prose and thrilling premise, but it's Collins' unflinching portrayal of a woman in grief and rage that'll make it difficult to forget this complex debut.