The Safekeep

• Winner of the Women's Prize 2025 • Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement. It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season… In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known. A thrilling, razor-sharp, perfectly plotted debut novel. - Sunday Times Moving, unnerving and deeply sexy. - Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring A brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one's own desires... Van der Wouden brings stunning power and control to her page-turner about trauma and repression. - Justine Jordan, Booker Prize Judge 2024