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Sarah Pinborough

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Pen name
  
Sarah Silverwood

Role
  
Writer

Name
  
Sarah Pinborough

Nationality
  
English

Occupation
  
Writer, teacher


Sarah Pinborough sarahpinboroughfileswordpresscom201203img00

Genre
  
Horror & supernatural, fantasy, young adult

Awards
  
British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction

Nominations
  
World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story

Books
  
The Death House, The Language of Dying, Poison, A Matter Of Blood: The Dog‑Face, Tales From the Kingdom

Similar People
  
Stephen King, David Llewellyn, Carlo Wolff

Profiles

Sarah Pinborough: Behind Her Eyes: A Suspenseful Psychological Thriller


Sarah Pinborough is an award-winning YA and adult thriller, fantasy and cross-genre novelist and screenwriter. She has published more than 20 novels and has written for the BBC and is currently working with several television companies on original projects. Her recent novels include the dystopian love story, The Death House, and a teenage thriller, 13 Minutes which has been bought by with Netflix with Josh Schwartz adapting.

Contents

Sarah Pinborough Sarah Pinborough on updating Snow White with Poison

Her next adult novel, a psychological thriller, Behind Her Eyes, was published in January 2017 from HarperFiction in the UK. The book has sold to over twenty territories worldwide and was sold at auction to the US in a significant deal to Flatiron, Macmillan. There are discussions on going with several movies studios about the film adaptation, and it will be Radio 4's Book at Bedtime in March.

Sarah Pinborough Amazoncouk Sarah Pinborough Books Biogs Audiobooks

Gollancz festival 2014 joe hill and sarah pinborough in conversation


Awards and nominations

Sarah Pinborough Sarah Silverwood Sarah Pinborough Interview Fantasy

The Language of Dying: 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won the 2010 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

Sarah Pinborough Shadow Writer The Official Paul Kane Website

"The Language of Dying is essentially a monologue – though really it is a one-sided dialogue, if such a thing exists – between the narrator, the middle child of five, and the family’s father, who is slowly dying from the lung cancer which wracks his entire body."

"Our Man in the Sudan": 2009 World Fantasy Award finalist

Screenwriting

  • In 2012, Pinborough wrote Old School Ties the second episode of the ninth series of the BBC TV police drama New Tricks.
  • M (2013) World Productions/ITV Global Returnable Drama Series.
  • Fallow Ground (2012) World Productions Original 3-part drama.
  • Red Summer (2012) Blind Monkey Pictures Feature screenplay. Under option.
  • Adaptations

    On 1 August 2012, it was announced that director Peter Medak had been attached to direct Cracked, a screenplay based on Pinborough's first novel The Hidden.

    Critical reception

  • “I loved 'The Death House. It's moving and totally involving. Pinborough writes with vividness and emotional resonance. I couldn't put it down.” – Stephen King on The Death House
  • “Sarah Pinborough is a literary chameleon of astonishing power and grace, carving out whole continents of fiction as her own: she's funny and perceptive, she writes real characters who live and die and she might even break your heart.” - Neil Gaiman, author of The Ocean at the End of the Lane on Behind Her Eyes
  • "Behind Her Eyes is a cunning puzzle-box of a novel, a masterfully engineered thriller that brings to mind Hitchcock at his most uncanny, and Rendell at her most relentless. Lean and mean, dark and disturbing, this is the kind of novel that takes over your life. Sarah Pinborough slays."- Joe Hill, author of Horns
  • "Behind Her Eyes is a dark, electrifying page-turner with a corker of an ending. Sarah Pinborough is about to become your new obsession." - Harlan Coben
  • ‘British author Pinborough effectively shifts perspectives between two complex characters in this twisty psychological thriller set in North London... Pinborough will keep even veteran genre readers guessing about which members of the trio, if any, are providing trustworthy accounts of their pasts and presents.’ -Publishers’ Weekly, on Behind Her Eyes
  • ‘…should be read by anyone who appreciates fast-paced, beautifully written, intricately plotted crime… Whichever form she takes her writing is engrossing as she bores into the heads of these riveting, terrifying teens’ -The Times (Children’s Book of the Week) on 13 Minutes
  • ‘It is a dark and nasty tale of jealously and manipulation...the characters are intriguingly flawed, the narrative tension bow-twangingly tight and there's an absolute belter of a twist’- Independent on Sunday on 13 Minutes “Sarah Pinborough has an enviable, almost Gaiman-esque ability to switch between styles, genres and tones with her books, and her latest, The Death House is her best yet.”- The Independent
  • “Shocking and gripping, albeit ultimately hopeful and utterly moving, and it's Sarah Pinborough's finest novel to date” Sci-Fi Now on The Death House ‘‘[A] beautiful novel, short, sharp and told with painful honesty, which I would say is the product of a writer at the very top of her game’- The Independent on The Language of Dying
  • ‘The Language of Dying will take your breath away, and send shivers up your spine… But only after it’s broken your heart’ – Tor.com
  • Wisely, Pinborough opts to build suspense subtly, rather than bludgeon readers with horrific imagery or buckets of gore, giving this nicely executed, surprisingly moving ghost story an old-fashioned feel in the best possible sense. – Review of The Taken in Publishers Weekly
  • There are a lot of familiar elements here – small town in danger, ancient artefacts of power, with scripture and biblical beings co-opted into the mix...Pinborough deftly stage manages all of these favourite things, putting her own spin on the material and weaving a convincing back story that knits together scripture and mythology. – Review in Black Static of Tower Hill by Peter Tennant.
  • There is plenty going on at street level. Troubled policeman, Cass, the core of the novel, is trying to solve a series of linked student suicides in what is a very good police procedural. What we have is a violent and dark novel that packs a wild set of ingredients between its covers. It wobbles occasionally (an omniscient violin playing tramp?) but it never falls. A remarkable achievement. – Review in the British Fantasy Society Journal of The Shadow of the Soul by Jim Steel
  • It might have been subtitled "Fifty Shades of White". Or perhaps it could bear Mae West's classic line as a cover quote: "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." It's a slim, undemanding read, but loads of fun and very saucy with it. – Review in the The Independent of Poison: 4 April 2013 by David Barnett
  • "Charm" was a light and frothy concoction, entertaining and true to the source material but with a subtext dealing with how fairy stories distort our expectations of reality. – Review in Black Static of Charm by Peter Tennant.
  • In this chilling exploration of madness and evil, Pinborough excels at summoning up the bleak spirit of Victorian London’s mean streets and those forced to fight for survival there. – Review of Mayhem in Publishers Weekly.
  • But anyone who comes to this book with their expectations wide open will find a beautiful novel, short, sharp and told with painful honesty, which I would say is the product of a writer at the very top of her game, were it not evident from the quality of her prodigious output that Sarah Pinborough still has a way to go before she comes anywhere close to peaking. – Review in the The Independent of The Language of Dying: 18 December 2013 by David Barnett
  • British author Pinborough manages to make this deeply disturbing sequel to 2013’s Mayhem even bleaker and more unsettling than its predecessor...The author’s ingenuity in weaving her macabre plot becomes fully evident by the powerful, jaw-dropping end, and she skilfully instils fear in the reader even with innocuous phrases. – Review of Murder in Publishers Weekly.
  • References

    Sarah Pinborough Wikipedia