Buy the books

Please click on the image of the books to find out more...

The Missing Person's Guide To Love

Purchase from: Picador.com or Amazon.co.uk

Isabel, Owen and Julia were childhood friends. But when they were fifteen, Julia disappeared without a trace – an event that had a devastating impact on the others.

Years later, Isabel returns to her home town in the north of England for Owen’s funeral. She hadn’t seen him since they recklessly burned down the local supermarket together; he was sent to prison and she, just shy of her 18th birthday, to a young offenders’ centre. Isabel suspects that Owen was responsible for Julia’s murder, and she’s hoping finally to find some kind of resolution.

Feeling cut off from her husband and child in Turkey, and awash with unexpected memories, Isabel ventures further into the murky depths of her past. But nothing is as it seems – either past or present – and as Isabel’s world unravels we finally realise the stunning, shattering truth...

'Jones evokes a sense of mystery and strangeness with the lightest of touches, and casts doubt on the reliability of her narrator in a manner reminiscent of Paul Auster. Experimental, teasing but always utterly readable, this novel will keep you guessing all the way through its 278 pages.' Independent on Sunday

‘Anyone familiar with Jones’s two previous books will know that, in her deliciously disorientating fictional worlds, nothing is ever quite as it seems… Jones is a mistress of disguise, not just in her characterization and plotting, but in her blurring of the divisions between right and wrong. Hers isn’t quite the deliberate amorality of Patricia Highsmith, but she similarly denies us any easy options when it comes to taking sides for or against her protagonists. With Isabel, in The Missing Person’s Guide to Love, Jones has fashioned her most complex, involving heroine yet and by far her most audacious sleight of hand in terms of a storyteller. To call it a twist would be to devalue what is really a hidden undercurrent of the whole narrative; nevertheless the revelation, when it comes, is breathtaking’. Literary Review

‘Exquisitely written yet utterly chilling, this will keep you gripped from start to finish: a potential book-group classic’. Elle

'Jones is a mistress of unexplained menace and keeps you guessing right to the end'. Mail on Sunday

‘Well written and the mystery is more mysterious than most’. The Times

‘An intriguing tale… An engrossing read, and one that’s quite mysterious at times, this is a book that you won’t be able to put down’. Easy Living

‘Mesmerising mystery… Disturbing and intriguing’. Woman and Home

Water Lily

Purchase from: Picador.com or Amazon.co.uk

Runa is a young Japanese high school teacher leaving the country to avoid the scandal she has created by sleeping with one of her students. She steals her sister’s passport and boards the ferry to Shanghai. Then, careful to impersonate her sister, she is quiet, docile and discreet...

Meanwhile, on the last stretch of a fraught and tiring mission to find a wife, an Englishman also boards the ferry. Rebuffed in Tokyo, Ralph hopes that on the Chinese mainland he will meet a gentle, beautiful girl to return home with.

When these two meet, suppressing at first their secrets and obsessions on this long and claustrophobic journey, we enter a desolate, emotional landscape as Runa’s journey begins to turn into a surreal and terrifying nightmare...

It is evident from her first two novels that Susanna Jones has a penchant for subversion. Not only does she use her characters to explore the dynamics of subversive behaviour, she also subverts the notion of genre fiction and – along with it – the expectations of readers. Is she a crime writer, a mystery writer, or a ‘literary’ novelist? The Literary Review
Read more...

'The most remarkable thing about this excellent novel is its balance...episodes that at first seem innocent become loaded with dark significance. The meeting of cultures has a fascinating authenticity, and the subtle narrative leads to a mesmerising finale'. Daily Mail

'Novels of psychological suspense hang on the delicacy of the writer's touch - that feathery brush - stroke that darkens a mood, heightens an action and brings a revealing word to a character's lips - and Susanna Jones has the touch...this meticulous stylist sets her alienated characters adrift in modern-day Japan and in spare, nuanced prose gently leads them into disaster'. New York Times

'This beautifully written and disturbing novel is filled with a sense of impending tragedy, as the personalities are developed and their thoughts revealed'. Sunday Telegraph

'Jones writes touchingly and convincingly...vividly evoking Runa's despair as her journey turns to nightmare'. Easy Living

'Jones's calm, measured prose spares us the details to good effect...cool, unfussy and with a twist in every tale'. Independent on Sunday

The Earthquake Bird

Purchase from: Picador.com or Amazon.co.uk

Early this morning, several hours before my arrest, I was woken by an earth tremor. I mention the incident not to suggest that there was a connection – that somehow the fault lines in my life came crashing together in a form of a couple of policemen – for in Tokyo we have a quake like this every month. I am simply relating the sequence of events as it happened. It has been an unusual day and I would hate to forget anything...

So begins The Earthquake Bird, a haunting novel set in Japan which reveals a murder on its first page and takes its readers into the mind of the chief suspect, Lucy Fly – a young, vulnerable English girl living and working in Tokyo as a translator. As Lucy is interrogated by the police she reveals her past to the reader, and it is a past which is dangerously ambiguous and compromising...

Why did Lucy leave England for the foreign anonymity of Japan ten years before, and what exactly had prompted her to sever all links with her family back home? She was the last person to see the murdered girl alive, so why was she not more forthcoming about the circumstances of their last meeting? As Lucy’s story unfolds, it emerges that secrets, both past and present, obsess her waking life.

'Shocking prose paired with sexual obsession': Read A N Wilson's World of Books column about The Earthquake Bird Telegraph.co.uk

‘The Earthquake Bird is an astonishingly accomplished debut...It is hard to believe that this skilfully constructed and beautifully written work is a first novel’. Sunday Telegraph

‘This spare, urgent debut is not only a polished crime novel, but a hymn to Tokyo and an awkwardly tender love story…The Earthquake Bird is distinguished by its alluring ambiguity’. Daily Telegraph

‘Jones renders Lucy’s painful realisation of lost love and missed opportunity with seductive delicacy’. Guardian

‘The sentences may be lean and spare, but the murder on the first page heralds a weight and menace to this story that’s strangely chilling...This is a very compelling debut. Elle

‘Fast paced and claustrophobic...a subtle portrait of how jealousy blooms from nothing’. The Times

‘This is the Japanese novel – obsessive, bordering on the surreal, replete with prosaic details that can be interpreted as clues, but clues to a mystery that remains mysterious.’ Observer

The Earthquake Bird was picked as one of 100 Books to Talk about for World Book Day 2008.