On her first shift at an Edinburgh halfway house for violent offenders, a young woman is taken hostage and thats just the beginning The twisty, shocking, darkly funny thriller by award-winning author Helen FitzGerald. `A new novel from Helen Fitzgerald is always a major event magnificent´ Mark Billingham `Outrageous, hilarious and dark as hell this is Helen FitzGerald on absolute top form´ Doug Johnstone `[Lou] is irresistible and very funny The set-up is fascinating, the narrative is both fast-moving and convincing´ Literary Review _______ They`re the housemates from Hell When her disastrous Australian love affair ends, Lou O´Dowd heads to Edinburgh for a fresh start, moving in with her cousin, and preparing for the only job she can find working at a halfway house for very high-risk offenders. Two killers, a celebrity paedophile and a paranoid coke dealer all out on parole and all sharing their outwardly elegant Edinburgh townhouse with rookie night-worker Lou And instead of finding some meaning and purpose to her life, she finds herself trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse where she stands to lose everything including her life. Slick, darkly funny and nerve-janglingly tense, Halfway House is both a breathtaking thriller and an unapologetic reminder never to corner a desperate woman __________________________ `Tense, claustrophobic and laugh-out-loud funny an amazingly talented writer´ Michael Wood `A genius combination of horror, humour and humanity´ B M Carroll Praise for Helen FitzGerald **Shortlisted for Theakston Crime Novel of the Year** `Sharp, shocking and savagely funny´ Chris Whitaker `Dark, dark, deliciously dark´ Amanda Jennings `Wickedly funny, breath-stealingly tense and utterly chilling´ Miranda Dickinson `The main character is one of the most extraordinary you`ll meet between the pages of a book´ Ian Rankin `Sublime´ Guardian `A dark, comic masterpiece´ Mark Edwards `Urgent, angry, absolutely terrifying´ Erin Kelly `Tantalisingly powerful´ The Times `The classic thriller gets a hell of a twist´ Heat `FitzGerald writes like a more focused Irvine Welsh or a less misogynist Philip Roth´ Daily Telegraph `Domestic life is rarely served up quite so dark as this´ Sun