Smoking Poppy (Gollancz S.F.) [Hardcover]

One of the most respected names in genre writing joins the VGSF list with an extraordinarily powerful and moving story of one man's search for his daughter in the myth shrouded jungles of Thailand.

Danny is approaching fifty, separated, lonely and bitter. He hasn't spoken to his wife in years; he despises his born-again son and is alienated from Charlie, his twenty-two year old daughter. But his alienation is forgotten when he learns that she has been arrested in Thailand for smuggling heroin. He flies out to Bangkok and discovers that the girl being held in Chiang-Mai prison is not Charlie. What follows is a desperate journey into the remote hinterlands of Thailand, where the jungles are ruled by drug gangs and haunted by the spirits. And dogging Danny's every step is a spectral figure, half glimpsed from the corner of his eye, brushing his sleeve in empty temples . . . SMOKING POPPY is about the love between a father and his daughter; it is an extraordinarily evocative journey into the sights and sounds of Thailand; a chilling descent into the supernatural. Graham Joyce's books are published around the world; they are elegantly written, full of brilliantly observed characters and always hugely readable.

Graham Joyce lives in Leicester with his wife and children. A full-time writer he has devoted much of his spare time to promoting literacy in prisons running creative writing courses in various high security prisons in the UK. He is a four time winner of the British Fantasy Award. He teaches creative writing at Nottingham University.