A Field Guide to Deception

Praise for Red Audrey and the Roping by Jill Malone:

“Luminescent writing. . . . Finely tuned, daring, and perceptive, Malone’s auspicious debut leaves us wanting more.”—Whitney Scott, Booklist

“A lyrical, passionate novel about desire, about danger, and about the need for self-forgiveness. A wonderfully impressive writing debut.”—Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet and The Night Watch

“First-rate writing and characterization.”—Cecelia Martin, Diva

“Malone’s nonlinear novel jitterbugs through time and place—the splintered chronology is a rewarding challenge. . . . A dazzling and dramatic debut.”—Richard Labonté, BookMarks/Q Syndicate

In Jill Malone’s second novel, A Field Guide to Deception, nothing is as simple as it appears: community, notions of motherhood, the nature of goodness, nor even compelling love. Revelations are punctured and then revisited with deeper insight, alliances shift, and heroes turn anti-hero—and vice versa.

With her aunt’s death Claire Bernard loses her best companion, her livelihood, and her son’s co-parent. Malone’s smart, intriguing writing beguiles the reader into this taut, compelling story of a makeshift family and the reawakening of a past they’d hoped to outrun. Claire’s journey is the unifying tension in this book of layered and shifting alliances.

A Field Guide to Deception is a serious novel filled with snappy dialogue, quick-moving and funny incidents, compelling characterizations, mysterious plot twists, and an unexpected climax. It is a rich, complex tale for literary readers.

Jill Malone’s first novel, Red Audrey and the Roping, won the Bywater Prize for Fiction.