The Eights

LONGLISTED FOR THE HISTORICAL WRITERS ASSOCIATION DEBUT CROWN AWARD

Entertaining and movingI came to love these four women as though they were my sisters TRACY CHEVALIER

I ADORED it. What a fantastic read. My book of the year JILL MANSELL

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They knew they were changing history.
They didnt know they would change each other.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the worlds most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fianc on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way and her own friends for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they wont be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone even The Eights if she is to succeed.

But Oxfords dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.

The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.

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'Beautifully captures the power of friendship ... A pleasure to read' PIP WILLIAMS, author of A Dictionary of Lost Words

'I so enjoyed The Eights' CLARE CHAMBERS, author of Small Pleasures