Prickly Company
Kitty Johnson
PUBLICATION DATE: 28 MAY 2024 | LAKE UNION | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £8.99
Frances Mathews doesn’t get out much since her husband died, but her fondness for the hedgehogs who pass through her garden prompts her to start a campaign to create a hedgehog highway in Hilltop Place―feeding stations, holes at the bottoms of gates and fences, and wild garden areas for hibernation. To Frances’s delight, her neighbours are on board. Mostly.
There are Jess and Michael, whose marriage is cracking under the unanticipated strain of a recent adoption. And Ryan, a wounded war reporter struggling to connect with his son after a divorce and forced to return to live with his mother. Then there’s the glamourous Tara and her daughter Hermie, new to the neighbourhood and already ruffling feathers. Finally, there’s Justin and Helen, a houseproud couple who are not keen to upend their picture-perfect garden for prickly nuisances.
Before long, the Hilltop Place hedgehog highway is thriving, and new friendships are springing up all over the neighbourhood. But with new friendships, secrets are revealed. What Frances and her charitable neighbours soon discover about themselves, and each other, is hardly what any of them expected. The peaceful neighbourhood will find itself threatened in ways that affect them all … hedgehogs included.
Kitty Johnson is the author of Five Winters. She has an MA in creative writing from the
University of East Anglia and teaches occasional creative writing classes. When writing
Prickly Company, Kitty drew on her volunteer work with Hodmedods charity as a hedgehog
driver, picking up distressed or injured hedgehogs and taking them to rescue centres. A
nature lover and artist, Kitty enjoys walking in woodland and on the coast and makes
collages and paintings from the landscape. She loves a challenge and once performed
stand-up comedy as research for a book ― an experience she found very scary but hugely
empowering. Kitty lives in Norwich, Norfolk with her partner and teenage son. For more
information, visit www.kittyjohnsonbooks.com.