Sarah Ridgard

‘Seldom Seen’, Sarah Ridgards novel was picked as one of the contenders for The Amazon’s Rising Stars Competition 2012, and is set in a sleepy Suffolk village in the 1990?s.

Fourteen year old Desiree is haunted by her gruesome discovery of the body of a baby in a ditch whilst out walking, and finds herself compelled to unearth secrets that perhaps should be left alone. A mesmerising debut, ‘Seldom Seen’ is particularly distinctive for its striking “evocation of landscape, of farming, its season, cruelties and epiphanies”. (The Guardian)

Having grown up in Suffolk, Sarah now lives in Norwich with her husband and daughters. Her choice from The Big Read top ten is ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’.

A reworking of the French 18th century classic, Paul et Virginie, Natasha Soobramanien’s debut novel is set in London, Mauritius and Rodrigues, and is an utterly original love story: the story of a sister’s love for a lost brother, and the story of his love for an island that never really was.

A Guardian Book of the Year 2012 and shortlisted for Amazon’s Rising Stars, ‘Genie and Paul’ was published to critical acclaim, described by the Times Literary Supplement as “both a bold interpretation of a French classic and a subtle meditation on the compulsion to keep looking, even when we know that what we are looking for no longer exists, and perhaps never existed at all”.