Husbands

Kyle Macdonald is not having a great year.

He's twenty-eight, single again, sleeping in his childhood bedroom in Birmingham, and teaching maths to kids who'd rather lock dinner ladies in cupboards. His acting career consists of a prosthetic nose that fell off during a sex scene and a non-speaking role as 'man at party'. His Grindr date stood him up. His mum still makes him beetroot sandwiches.

Then a phone call turns his life upside down.

It turns out that six years ago, on a drunken night in Las Vegas, Kyle married a man. Not just any man — Aaron Biedermeier, one of Hollywood's most powerful directors. Kyle has no memory of it. Aaron is now in a coma. And Aaron's people want Kyle in Los Angeles. Immediately.

What follows is not the simple paperwork Kyle was promised.

His passport is confiscated. His questions go unanswered. He's sent on a road trip along Route 66 with Noah Winters, an impossibly handsome actor who makes Kyle feel things he wasn't expecting to feel. But as the miles stack up, so do the lies — and Kyle begins to realise that the people who flew him five thousand miles don't need a husband. They need someone to take the blame for something far worse than a forgotten wedding.

Husbands is a darkly comic thriller about a man who spent his whole life being polite, and the moment he discovers that silence is the most dangerous thing of all. It is laugh-out-loud funny, nail-bitingly tense, and, when it needs to be, devastating.

For readers of The Maid by Nita Prose, The Appeal by Janice Hallett and Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson.

"Fanning (author of Ghosted) narrates Kyle's naïve pursuit of fame and fortune with brisk prose, sharp dialogue, and a strong sense of dark ironies."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Punchy writing and appealing characters."

KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Heart-mangling with LOL moments. I thoroughly enjoyed this dark, romantic road trip."

TINA BAKER

"A head-snapping dive into a twisted and sexy tale of ambition, revenge and murder set against a sun-bleached tear-stained postcard sent postage-due from the heart of Hollywood Babylon."

JOSH LANYON