Before the Fire

It's June 2011. Stick and Mac are a couple of months shy of eighteen; summer's approaching and they're about to leave their north Manchester estate for the beaches of southern Spain.

But the night before they're planning leave, Mac ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, the victim of a random knife attack, and suddenly Stick's going nowhere.

His mum doesn't want him to leave the house; his dad's desperate to be his best friend; and his nan's boyfriend keeps telling him Mac's doing just fine in the spirit world.

Then he meets J and she might just be everything he needs. Except she's a firebrand with a grudge against the police, and the August riots are just around the corner...

PRAISE FOR SARAH BUTLER

"Butler is brilliant at capturing Stick's inner teenage turmoil, his anger, his feelings of futility, the terrible depths of his grief and his easy contempt for adults who clumsily try to help. By setting the novel in the months leading up to the 2011 riots, Butler also hints at a wider social dimension to teenage disaffection, while ensuring that Stick remains a riveting and sympathetic character" Daily Mail

"The portrait of a young man on the edge, consumed by rage and grief, is beautifully drawn and captivates the reader so well that as the story builds towards the climax the tension is almost unbearable I liked too the flashes of humour and poignancy in the novel which reads like a bittersweet love letter to Manchester" Cath Staincliffe, author of Ruthless