The Squeee

Today, author Rosy Thornton has released her latest novel, called Ninepins . There's already a positive buzz about it, one reviewer calling it "tense, engaging and atmospheric", and Waterstones saying it has "the tension of a thriller". Ninepins is an isolated former tollhouse, standing high on a bank beside a waterway in the Cambridgeshire fens. There, since her divorce, Laura lives alone with her 12-year-old daughter, Beth. Below the bank stands the old pumphouse – a former fen drainage station – which is rented to a series of student lodgers. But this year’s lodger is different: Willow is seventeen, and in local authority care. Battling down her reservations, Laura takes her on. Do Willow’s strangenesses and her mysterious and troubled past make her a threat to Laura and, especially, to Beth? What were the circumstances surrounding the act of arson which led to Willow being taken into care? Set against the brooding landscape of the fens, Ninepins explo