The Household

From the Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Women's Prize Futures Award, the captivating, highly anticipated new novel from Stacey Halls.

In a quiet house in the countryside outside London, the finishing touches are being made to welcome a group of young women. The house and its location are top secret, its residents unknown to one another, but the girls have one thing in common: they are fallen. Offering refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute, Urania Cottage is a second chance at life - but how badly do they want it?

Nearing the end of her prison term, Josephine Nash accepts an invitation to live at Urania to please the woman she loves, but finds herself arriving alone and heartbroken. There she meets Martha Gelder, who is eager for a fresh start, but is soon dealt a devastating blow that causes her to question her future.

A few miles away in a Piccadilly mansion, millionairess Angela Burdett-Coutts makes a discovery that leaves her cold: her stalker of 10 years has been released from prison, and is intent on revenge . . .

As the three women's worlds collide in ways they could never have expected, they find that freedom always comes at a price . . .

About the Author

Stacey Halls was born in 1989 and grew up in Rossendale, Lancashire. She studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire and has written for publications including the Guardian, Stylist, Psychologies, the Independent, the Sun and Fabulous. Her first book, The Familiars, was the bestselling debut hardback novel of 2019, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Debut Book of the Year.

The Foundling, her second, was a Sunday Times bestseller, as was her third Mrs England. Mrs England was longlisted for the Portico Prize, the Walter Scott Prize and won the Women's Prize Futures Award.