Bird Spotting In A Small Town

Overview

You've always got to listen to the birds.

In a tiny town on the North Norfolk coast, Fran's life is unraveling.

As she fills her days cleaning the caravan park she owns, she is preoccupied by worry - about the behavior of her son, the absences of her husband and her strained relationship with her sister's family. Her one source of relief: early in the mornings, before the responsibilities and uncertainties take over, she slips out to the beach to watch the birds.

Small-town tension simmers all around her when a new teacher starts at the local school and a Romany community settle in the field adjoining her caravan park. Not to mention the beheaded birds that have started appearing across the town.

Then the schoolteacher and Fran's brother-in-law both go missing on the same night. But all Fran can seem to care about is the birds.

Meanwhile, Tad, a seventy-year-old Romany man, watches the townspeople from the distance of his caravan - and sees everything clearly.

Bird Spotting in a Small Town is an unsettling story of strange occurrences and buried secrets, perfectly evoking the eerie isolation of life in a small community when nothing feels quite right.

Reviews

"A haunting, disquieting novel, exquisitely written. The detail throughout is like acupuncture and the whole thing is difficult to pull away from. I read it in short bursts because each sitting left me with something new to think about." —Ian Moore, author of Death and Croissants  

"A dark and deliciously tense modern fairy-tale, brutal and beautiful." —Sophie Hannah, author, New Hercule Poirot series, on Travel By Night

Author Biography

Sophie Morton-Thomas was born in West Sussex and has always loved reading and writing - she had about ten penfriends as a child. She is now an English teacher as well as a parent to three (two grown-up!) children and two cats. Her first novel, Travel by Night, was published by darkstroke, an imprint of Crooked Cat Books, and was a #1 Bestseller across multiple Amazon Kindle categories. She is currently a student on the University of Cambridge's Crime and Thriller Writing master's degree and recently moved to the coast for work - but also for inspiration for her stories!