Earlyfate
By Nat Reeve
Published 10th October 2024
9781917008068 / Paperback / £12.99
The whole Division will sneer when they read this, I know it. But how, pray tell, was I to discern just how wrong it would go?
Pip Property is no stranger to disaster. Typically, they’ve got a plan, but now Dallyangle’s favourite dandy & part-time criminal is locked in the morgue of the crime-fighting Division gone rogue, accused of far more crimes than they’ve actually committed, with (at least) two bucolic burglars out to strangle them with their own cravat. Their lover – the semi-feral Welsh heiress Rosamond Nettleblack – has disappeared into dangerous hands. Enlisting the Division to save Rosamond might be Pip’s only hope, but the cravat designer and the chaotic vigilantes have never seen eye to eye. The Division is looking to prove themselves to a potential new patron – and trusting schemers like Pip is a risk the detectives don’t want to take.
Armed only with a borrowed notebook, threadbare charm, suits without cravat pins, and a swordstick everyone keeps confiscating, Pip must get the Division on-side, convince them that faith is a thing they can still have, and unravel the truth behind Rosamond’s disappearance before it’s too late.
From the author of Nettleblack, Earlyfate throws us back into the same madcap Neo-Victorian world, where queerness is a given and chaos is mandatory.
Praise for nettleblack:
“A joy to be invited into the raucous, charming, conniving world of Nettleblack. Nat Reeve's novel presents a vivid, entirely engrossing story where subterfuge, scurrilousness, skullduggery and sincerity zip through the pages. All told with wit, flair and heart: a true delight.”
– Eley Williams, author of The Liar’s Dictionary and Attrib. & Other Stories
“Fresh, witty, and wildly original, Nettleblack is an unforgettable debut that brings a world of subversive characters to brilliant life, and announces the arrival of a unique new voice.”
– Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath and We That Are Young
"Nettleblack arrives breathlessly, wholly itself, yet also winding down the strange and brilliant bent lanes previously ridden by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Robert Aickman. It’s a gorgeous bicycle basket of a novel wherein there are many things that delight my big gay heart, including bicycles and the divided skirts in which to ride them; ferrets and novelty rat pyjamas; surprising cravats and haircuts; full tilt journalling for justice (and love); scandalous novels; self-naming; swooning; sisters, and running away from – and towards – them; and a cornucopia of true love, of every kind and queerness. A heart tonic in a dark time, Nettleblack will sweep you up unawares and carry you along in its headlong plots and desires, just as the Dallyangle Division does to Henry – and like Henry, you may find that it changes, and even saves, you, or at the very least, makes you ecstatic."
– So Mayer, author of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing
“Nettleblack plunges the reader head-first into an immersive and absorbing world of Victorian demi-monde derring-do, told by an unforgettable narrator. Henry Nettleblack avoids a (married) fate worse than death by hiding amongst a band of intrepid thief-catchers, experiencing a thrilling (and queer) coming-of-age outside the boundaries of conventional society. Nat Reeves' debut sizzles and crackles with confidence, offering a timeless tale of LGBTQ people finding family wherever they can. A delight!”
- Ally Wilkes, author of All the White Spaces
Nat Reeve is a novelist and a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing. Nat has a PhD in Victorian Studies from Royal Holloway, and their debut novel Nettleblack was published by Cipher Press in 2022. Nettleblack follows a gang of queer misfit Victorian detectives causing chaos in a small country town, and its upcoming sequel, Earlyfate, follows a dandyish nonbinary cravat designer ruining said detectives’ week in every way possible.