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Emma Stonex talks to Stephanie Merritt

Fictions: The Sunshine Man

Hay Festival 2025, 

The author of The Lamplighters introduces her suspenseful new novel. The Sunshine Man is the story of a terrible crime that shakes a community, and of a revenge plotted over decades.

Birdie Keller wakes up one freezing January morning to hear that her sister’s killer has been freed from jail. Birdie leaves for London with a pistol and a plan: to find this man and make him pay. She’s been waiting two decades to get him, biding her time: here, at last, revenge. But Jimmy Maguire, the man she’s after, knew Birdie a long time ago, in a life she’d sooner forget. They’ve got history, and he isn’t the only one with a secret.