Black Chalk - Softcover

"An inventive and intricate psychological puzzle thriller that mystifies, torments, disturbs, beguiles... a powerfully intelligent debut" (Marcel Berlins The Times)

"A compulsive page-turner that will hold your attention until the very last word" (Natasha Harding Sun)

"Sinister, addictive and unpredictable – this is a novel to be devoured greedily, at speed, but one that will leave its footprint on your memory for far longer" (Natasha Lunn Red)

"Yates’s take on the collegiate thriller lives up to early comparisons to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History... filled with gleeful malevolence" (Grazia)

"[A] chilling debut...this is a thriller, a cautionary tale and a sobering exploration of unintended consequences rolled into one" (Daily Mail)

"Black Chalk grabs from the get-go... Yates plots with tantalizing skill" (Ellen Shapiro People)

"This addictive psychological thriller will have you hooked from start to game over" (Stylist)

"Compelling" (John O'Connell Guardian)

"A truly chilling thriller, with campus-fun-gone-wrong echoes of Donna Tartt's The Secret History" (Psychologies)

"A very exciting debut - like The Secret History, but so much creepier... This is intellectually challenging psychological thriller writing at a high level" (Shots Mag)

One game. Six students. Five survivors.

It was only ever meant to be a game.

A game of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares. A game to be played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal, more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results.

Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round.