The Girl Below: A Novel

A powerful and truly haunting debut novel from Bianca Zander with a spine-tingling hint of the gothic and supernatural, The Girl Below enthralls with a strange magic akin to the works of Audrey Niffenegger, Haruki Murakami, and Sarah Waters. Zander’s novel is a story of parents and children; of love, regret, and second chances. When a young English woman, recently returned to London after a ten-year absence, finds herself slipping back into her childhood, she must solve the mysteries of her dysfunctional family—and unearths disturbing secrets that could shatter everything she believes about who she is and her place in the world.
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Suki Piper is a stranger in her hometown. . . .

After ten years in New Zealand, Suki returns to London, to a city that won't let her in. However, a chance visit with Peggy—an old family friend who still lives in the building where she grew up—convinces Suki that there is a way to reconnect with the life she left behind a decade earlier. But the more involved she becomes with Peggy's dysfunctional family, including Peggy's wayward sixteen-year-old grandson, the more Suki finds herself mysteriously slipping back in time—to the night of a party her parents threw in their garden more than twenty years ago, when something happened in an old, long-unused air-raid shelter. . . .

A breathtaking whirlwind of mystery, transgression, and self-discovery, Bianca Zander's The Girl Below is a haunting tale of secrets, human frailty, and dark memory that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new literary talent.

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“A terrific read -- the sort of book you don’t want to put down, and then stays with you when you do . . . Zander works the entwined themes of estrangement and strangeness beautifully.” - New Zealand Herald

“[A] well-crafted novel whose emotional impact will linger after the final page.” - Publishers Weekly

“Zander’s debut brims with truth; her accuracy of detail and way with words can be dizzying. This is a nuanced, complex portrait of contemporary female subjectivity.” - Samuel Park, author of This Burns My Heart

“The mystery at the core of this beautifully crafted novel was so compelling that I couldn’t sleep until I finished it. . . . This is a wonderful, surprising and accomplished debut novel.” - Marianne Elliott, author of Zen Under Fire

“Sharp, incisive, funny, THE GIRL BELOW is an intoxicating read. Combining gritty coming-of-age realism with time-travelling weirdness, Zander’s writing brings the genius of Murakami to mind.” - Sarah Laing, author of Coming Up Roses and Dead People's Music

“I just loved THE GIRL BELOW--it’s so real and moving, so funny and smart, so sharp and artful. In every sense, Bianca Zander is a fantastic writer, and I’m recommending this magical novel to all my friends.” - Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Prep and American Wife