We are very pleased to share that riverrun has signed Rebecca Wait‘s Bad Associations. Publisher Jon Riley and commissioning editor Jasmine Palmer bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Caroline Hardman.

Bad Associations will be released in hardback, ebook and audio on 15 July 2027. Set in 1994, in the once glorious, now ragged, city of Gloucester, two kids stand on a street corner watching the police remove multiple human remains from a house. Adam, a Jehovah’s Witness, thinks it’s a sign that Armageddon is imminent. Holly, his sociopathic best friend (a one-sided arrangement), thinks it might suggest her mum didn’t just pop out for cigarettes after all. As one of the largest serial killer investigations in UK history plays out, Adam and Holly become caught up in currents they don’t fully understand, with terrible consequences.

Now, 12 years later, Holly is back; Adam never left. Holly is still determined to uncover the truth, by any means necessary, while Adam is trying to cling onto the remnants of his faith – in Jehovah, and in other people. An uneasy love story unfolds between them, although Adam has lost all hope of salvation, Holly may not be capable of love, and the dark forest they’ve entered has no easy way out.

Rebecca Wait has commented: “What a joy to be working with Jasmine and Jon again, and with the hugely talented team at riverrun. This will be the fourth book I’ve published with riverrun, and I’m very lucky to be working with a group of people I know well and trust.”

Riley said: “Bad Associations is funny, touching, sad, stylish, and finally, exhilarating, and it shows perfectly why Rebecca Wait is one of the very best novelists of her generation.”

Palmer said: “Wait has reached new heights of brilliance with this novel that asks if people are ever too broken to be mended by love and how long can we go on searching for those that we’ve lost? In Holly and Adam, Wait has created two characters that capture the human condition in all its messy, chaotic glory. A unique alchemy of humour and heart beats through the narrative, as lives expand and a devasting and tender love story emerges.”