Slow River: A Novel

WINNER OF THE LAMBDA LITERARY AND NEBULA AWARDS • Left for dead and with her identity destroyed, a woman must navigate a shadowy world of crime and deception to reinvent herself and confront her past.

“Slow River elevates the genre, joining a select few books that shine as beacons of excellence.”—The Seattle Times

This edition includes a new essay by the author: “Writing Slow River.”

She wakes in an alley to the splash of rain: naked, the foot-long gash in her back still bleeding, and her identity implant gone. Lore van de Oest, once the daughter of one of the world’s most powerful families, is now . . . nobody. And she has to hide.

Then out of the rain walks Spanner, predator and thief, who takes her in, cares for her wound, and teaches her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one can find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who left her in that alley to die. She has escaped . . . but the cost of her newfound freedom is crime and deception, and she pays it, over and over, until she starts to loathe who she’s becoming.

Lore has a choice: She can stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner, and risk losing herself forever. Or she can find herself again—but only by becoming someone else, one last time.

“[A] voyage down the secret streams inside us all.”—The Washington Post

Nicola Griffith is the author of nine novels, including Hild, Spear, and Menewood. In addition to her fiction and nonfiction (New York Times, Guardian, Nature, New Scientist) she is known for her data-driven 2015 work on bias in the literary ecosystem and as founder and co-host, with Alice Wong, of #CripLit. Awards include the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize, Society of Authors ADCI Literary Prize, two Washington State Book Awards, the Premio Italia, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Otherwise/Tiptree awards, and six Lambda Literary Awards. She holds a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University, is married to writer Kelley Eskridge, and lives in Seattle.