In the Civilized World, everyone is rich, yet money doesn’t buy safety. It only buys a gold coffin. The real currency is having the right allies. Low-citizens survive by joining high-citizens’ exclusive inner circles, trading loyalty for protection from laws that govern speech, dress, and posture—and punish mistakes with public beheading. Low-citizen Loredana Waldsten already knows the cost of breaking the rules. Once a rising fencing prodigy, she lost the right to carry weapons after killing a high-citizen in a brutal locker-room attack. The courts erased his death to preserve his family’s honor. Now she’s unarmed, legally defenseless, and enrolled at the elite Grandmaster University, where champagne spills into the gutters and reputations are built on death duels. When Loredana’s father, a low-citizen politician, publicly challenges the high-citizens, she becomes a target. Some classmates demand her execution. Others hunt her for sport. And by law, she’s forbidden to fight back. Her only chance of survival lies with Edmund Prew, a powerful and ruthless high-citizen student she’s been warned against. His family has been locked in a bitter feud with Loredana’s for years, and he wants nothing to do with her until a lost bet forces him to protect her within his inner circle. What begins as a scandalous, strategic alliance turns perilous as they fall for each other. Because the man Loredana killed was more than an average high-citizen. And if Edmund ever learns the truth, the only person keeping Loredana alive may become the one most determined to kill her.

From a rising star in literary fiction comes a story of two discoveries made deep in an Irish bogland, threading together four lives across time.When a dog finds a strange, alien antler in a restored bog, the owner's first thought is to keep it for himself. But when he realises the value of his find, he is drawn back to the rich peat to keep searching. It is not one stag skeleton that is buried there, but dozens – an ancient dying ground of the Great Irish Elk.Other things have surfaced from the prehistoric settlements, bronze cauldrons, ancient butter, iron weapons – and the mutilated body of a two-thousand-year-old female. Fifty years ago, a young archaeologist named her Belroe Woman, and dedicated his life to telling the story of her sacrificial death. While state and public treat the bog body as a national treasure, others must reckon with its otherworldly influence over their the peat-cutter who first unearthed her and carries this discovery like a curse; the archaeologist's daughter who grows up in the shadow of the bog's strange magnetism; and the young environmental scientist whose work draws her back to where it all began. From antler to bog body, The Red Mouth – an béal rua – is a haunting, lyrical exploration of how shifting histories can reshape landscape, language and legacies. The deep time of the bog is both mystical and sinister, the iron-fed streams running through its soil staining everything they touch. Those bound to it must decide what to bury – and what to unearth.PRAISE FOR SHEILA 'Unsettling, unpredictable, and brilliant' Roddy Doyle'Vivid, sensuous ... A subtle tale of loss, loneliness and disconnection' Paul Lynch'Lush, lyrical and cleverly constructed. A beautiful book' Louise Kennedy'Beautifully written ... An unchained sea melody' Anne Enright'Writes complex and troubling stories with such unflinching graciousness' Jan Carson