The Shining Girls: A Novel

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Overview

THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN'T EXIST.

The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own."

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He's the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth . . .

THE SHINING GIRLS is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal.

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The Shining Girls

What People Are Saying

Tana French, author of Broken Harbor

The Shining Girls is utterly original, beautifully written, and I must say, it creeped the holy bejasus out of me. This is something special.

Matt Haig, author of The Radleys

I loved The Shining Girls. It really is a new kind of thriller, sitting somewhere between The Time Traveler's Wife and The Silence of the Lambs. A dark, relentless, time-twisting, page-turning murder story guaranteed to give you heart palpitations. It shines.

Cory Doctorow, author of Homeland and Little Brother

A tremendous work of suspense fiction...a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise.

William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition

Very smart...completely kick-ass. Beukes' handling of the joints between the realistic and the fantastic is masterful, and those are always my favorite parts, in this kind of story. Not the weirdness (which is itself superb here, and very ample) but the segue to it. The liminal instant.

Jeff Vandermeer

"Beukes's energetic noir crackles with original ideas.

Paul Cornell

"Lauren Beukes is Jeff Noon crossed with Raymond Chandler.

Deon Meyer

"THE SHINING GIRLS is enthralling and dazzlingly inventive. Lauren Beukes risks everything with a startlingly original structure, that's perfectly executed. A huge accomplishment.

Richard Kadrey

"Imagine Poe and Steinbeck in a knife fight where Poe wins and writes Jack the Ripper's version of The Grapes of Wrath. Lauren Beukes's THE SHINING GIRLS is even scarier than that.

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Editorial Reviews

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

…[a] strong contender for the role of this summer's universal beach read. Ms. Beukes is a South African whose earlier works have been closer to hard-core science fiction, but The Shining Girls is pure thriller. The Irish writer Tana French, no slouch at transfixing and scaring readers, may have spoken for us all when she said of this expert hair-raiser: "It creeped the holy bejasus out of me."

Publishers Weekly

South African author Beukes, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Zoo City, adds an intriguing wrinkle to the serial killer suspense novel. In the creepy opening chapter, set in 1974, sadist Harper Curtis, who’s on the prowl for one of his “shining girls” (“bright young women burning with potential”), approaches six-year-old Kirby Mazrachi, as she plays alone. After an initially friendly exchange turns nasty, Harper promises that he will see Kirby when she’s grown up. In 1989, he keeps that promise by savagely attacking her. Miraculously, Mazrachi survives and leverages an internship with a Chicago newspaper into a private investigation of her assailant who can travel through time. The shifting perspectives require readers to stay alert, but those who do will be rewarded. Beukes is particularly good at garnering sympathy for Harper’s female victims, creating deep characterizations in only a few pages, so that they come across as more than just fodder for a psychopath’s mission. 5-city author tour. (June)

Entertainment Weekly

"A grisly crime thriller meets sci-fi action meets historical fiction in a wildly inventive summer page-turner."

Chicago Sun-Times

"One of the scariest and best-written thrillers of the year, not to mention the most memorable portrait of a serial killer since Henry H. Holmes in....Erik Larson's 2003 nonfiction bestseller The Devil in the White City."

NPR.org

"A triumph ... [T]he smart and spunky Kirby Mizrachi is as exciting to follow as any in recent genre fiction ... [E]ach chapter in which [Harper] appears holds a reader's attention, especially the sharply described murder scenes - some of which read as much like starkly rendered battlefield deaths out of Homer as forensic reconstructions of terrible crimes ... This book means business."

USA Today

"[Beukes is] so profusely talented - capable of wit, darkness, and emotion on a single page - that a blockbuster seems inevitable....The Shining Girls marks her arrival as a major writer of popular fiction."

Time

"The premise is pure Stephen King, but Beukes gives it an intricate, lyrical treatment all her own."

Cory Doctorow

"A tremendous work of suspense fiction. What's more, it's a fabulous piece of both time-travel and serial killer fiction, using the intersection of those two themes to explore questions of free will, predestination, and causality in a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise."

William Gibson

"Very smart...completely kick-ass. Beukes' handling of the joints between the realistic and the fantastic is masterful, and those are always my favorite parts, in this kind of story. Not the weirdness (which is itself superb here, and very ample) but the segue to it. The liminal instant."

Florida Times-Union

"A compelling roller coaster read."

Wired

"One of this summer's hottest books."

Tana French

"THE SHINING GIRLS is utterly original, beautifully written, and I must say, it creeped the holy bejasus out of me. This is something special."

Matt Haig

"I loved THE SHINING GIRLS. It really is a new kind of thriller, sitting somewhere between The Time Traveller's Wife and The Silence of The Lambs. A dark, relentless, time-twisting, page-turning murder story guaranteed to give you heart palpitations. It shines."

Deon Meyer

"THE SHINING GIRLS is enthralling and dazzlingly inventive. Lauren Beukes risks everything with a startlingly original structure, that's perfectly executed. A huge accomplishment."

Richard Kadrey

"Imagine Poe and Steinbeck in a knife fight where Poe wins and writes Jack the Ripper's version of The Grapes of Wrath. Lauren Beukes's THE SHINING GIRLS is even scarier than that."

on Moxyland Cosmopolitan

PRAISE FOR LAUREN BEUKES:

"The world Beukes has invented is both eerily familiar and creepily different."

on Moxyland GQ

"Intriguing characters and big ideas."

Jeff Vandermeer

"Beukes's energetic noir crackles with original ideas."

Paul Cornell

"Lauren Beukes is Jeff Noon crossed with Raymond Chandler."

GQ

"Intriguing characters and big ideas."

Cosmopolitan

PRAISE FOR LAUREN BEUKES:

"The world Beukes has invented is both eerily familiar and creepily different."

Kirkus Reviews

Beukes carries her experimentation in science fiction (Moxyland, 2010) and fantasy (Zoo City, 2010) to very dark corners as she follows a time-traveling serial killer who preys on young Chicago women from the 1930s until the 1990s. In 1974, a little girl named Kirby takes a toy pony from a strange man in his 30s named Harper. In 1931, Harper, a tramp no older or younger than in 1974, hears and follows mysterious music to a boarded-up tenement and opens the front door with a key he has found in the pocket of a coat he stole earlier that night. Inside the house, which is elegantly furnished, is a man's dead body. On the bedroom wall are the names of girls possessing a special glow that he must extinguish (and his first victim is a young showgirl with a literal glow about her from the radium she uses in her act). Each time Harper leaves his house, he can travel in time. He marks his victims first by giving them small gifts, then returns years later to kill them. And he returns again and again to 1931. Because of his ability to travel in and out of the 60-year time frame, he avoids suspicion. But there are glitches. In 1951, the transgendered showgirl he met in 1940 kills herself before he can kill her. In 1993, an artist turned crack addict has already lost her shine by the time he strikes. And Kirby, whom Harper assumes he has killed in 1989, has managed to survive. By 1993, when Harper's pace has sped up, Kirby is a student intern for attractive, middle-aged newspaper reporter Dan, who covered the story of her attack. Tracking her assailant, Kirby begins to suspect the bizarre nature of Harper's vicious killing spree. Despite thrillingly beautiful sentences, Beukes' considerable imaginative powers seem wasted in this shallow, often ugly game of cat and mouse tarted up with supernatural elements that do not bear too much scrutiny.

Cory Docotorow

"A tremendous work of suspense fiction... a mind-melting, heart-pounding mashup that delivers on its promise."

Matt Haig

Richard Kadrey

"Imagine Poe and Steinbeck in a knife fight where Poe wins and writes Jack the Ripper's version of The Grapes of Wrath. Lauren Beukes's THE SHINING GIRLS is even scarier than that."

Deon Meyer

"THE SHINING GIRLS is enthralling and dazzlingly inventive. Lauren Beukes risks everything with a startlingly original structure, that's perfectly executed. A huge accomplishment."

Tana French

"THE SHINING GIRLS is utterly original, beautifully written, and I must say, it creeped the holy bejasus out of me. This is something special."

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Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780316216852
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Publication date: 6/4/2013
Pages: 375
Sales rank: 1337
Product dimensions: 6.40 (w) x 9.18 (h) x 1.25 (d)

Meet the Author

Lauren Beukes is the author of the acclaimed novelsMoxyland and Zoo City. She is a recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, finished runner-up to Lev Grossman for the John W Campbell Award, was shortlisted for a plethora of other awards and received rave reviews from around the world including The New York Timesand The Guardian. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her husband and her daughter.

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Customer Reviews

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The Shining Girls: A Novel

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Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

The Shining Girls

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Publishers Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Chicago Sun-Times

NPR.org

USA Today

Time

Cory Doctorow

William Gibson

Florida Times-Union

Wired

Tana French

Matt Haig

Deon Meyer

Richard Kadrey

on Moxyland Cosmopolitan

on Moxyland GQ

Jeff Vandermeer

Paul Cornell

GQ

Cosmopolitan

Kirkus Reviews

Cory Docotorow

Matt Haig

Richard Kadrey

Deon Meyer

Tana French

Product Details

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Customer Reviews

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1 Star

A good read if you like Time Travel, mystery and serial killers!

Confusing

This book is terrible. I normally read books in days, its taken

Masterfully crafted book

Different

Slow pick up.. But once you start to connect the dots it's a gre

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes is a stellar thriller that in

Available on NOOK devices and apps

Nook Devices

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NOOK

NOOK Color

NOOK Tablet

Tablet/Phone

NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet

NOOK for iOS

NOOK for Android

NOOK Kids for iPad

PC/Mac

NOOK for Windows 8

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NOOK Study