Winchelsea

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4A SPECTATOR BEST OF THE YEAR - AS CHOSEN BY REVIEWERSThe year is 1742.

Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea.

But when she turns sixteen, her father is murdered by men he thought were friends. In a town where lawlessness prevails, Goody and her brother Francis must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers in order to find justice.

Facing high seas and desperate villains, she discovers what life can be like without constraints or expectations, developing a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast. Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?