DEBUT NOVEL – mystery and suspense in a coming-of-age story
about murder, grieving and the meaning of family.
Out now from Seren Books.
Join Seren’s free Bookclub and receive 20% discount.
Also available from real shops (you might have to order it)
and here is the link to Amazon where The Chicken Soup Murder is available in paperback and for Kindle.
Kind words
from Christopher Meredith, Francesca Rhydderch, Danny Wallace and Fay Weldon:
‘A thoroughly original, startling and very good novel indeed.’ – Fay Weldon
‘A beautifully written debut, with characters to fall in love with.’ – Danny Wallace
‘A lovely, warm-hearted novel about love and grief.’ – Francesca Rhydderch
‘In her debut short story collection, Pumping up Napoleon, Maria Donovan emerged as a writer of controlled economy, power and originality.
‘The Chicken Soup Murder shows she’s just as intelligent and entertaining in the long haul of the novel. She evokes the sometimes disturbing voice of her boy-narrator utterly convincingly. She’s skilful in suggesting the adult world and a wonderfully exactly realised milieu and range of characters through 12 year-old Michael, as well as the limitations and liberations of his perceptions.
‘It’s fresh, suspenseful and tantalising. But under the clever structure with its building tension, under the clear, lively style and her playfulness with some well-known tropes and genres, under the comic set-pieces and adept plotting, she works a subtle set of variations on the theme of loss, the damage it wreaks, and on how difficult it is for us to comprehend and deal with that damage when it hits the people closest to us.’ – Christopher Meredith
The Chicken Soup Murder was a finalist for the Dundee International Book Prize
Shortlisted for the Rubery Book Awards 2018: Fiction Category.
Shortlisted for the Dorchester Literary Festival Local Writing Prize 2019
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Special thanks to:
Eric Goulden (Wreckless Eric) and Imagem for permission to quote lyrics from ‘Final Taxi’
SHORT STORIES
Pumping Up Napoleon
An offbeat collection of fifteen short stories.
Fay Weldon: ‘These stories are remarkable, and engrossing: sometimes funny, sometimes sinister, always accomplished. Some will be classics.’
Emma Darwin: ‘Maria Donovan’s beautifully poised stories exploit the friction between the ordinary and the truly bizarre. The reader laughs, and shivers, and finishes many with a lump in the throat.’
Praise for the title story from Carol Ann Duffy: ‘This compelling, at times laugh-out-loud, at times disturbing, tale seemed to me to have the seeds of something larger in it’
Buy from amazon.co.uk amazon.com Seren Books
FLASH FICTION
Tea for Mr Dead
Playful, poignant fiction appetizers
laced with dark humour
Buy from amazon.co.uk or amazon.com
Maria Donovan 