Marion Brunet, born in 1976, is a well known Young Adult author in France. Her YA novels have received over 30 prizes, including the 2017 UNICEF Prize for Youth Literature. Marion has previously worked as a special needs educator and now writes her fiction in Marseille. Summer of Reckoning is her first novel aimed at adults and her first work to be translated into English. It won the Grand Prix de la Literature Policiere in 2018. Katherine Gregor is an acclaimed translator from the French and the Italian. She has translated numerous novels including The Combat of Shadows by Andrea H. Japp, Berezina by Sylvain Tesson and The Carousel of Desire by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.
With raw, chilling and incisive prose, Brunet takes us into a world of sectarian convictions dominated by the hatred of the rich, the bosses, the foreigners and the 'different'. --L'Express With its intense rage, corrosive boredom and low-life scams, Brunet's South of France is saturated with broken dreams. And the last flickers of childhood are terrifying, proving that, even under the strong sun, social barriers remain implacable. --Paris Match A story that is dark and luminous at the same time, dark following the slow unravelling of the crime story affecting Celine, and luminous in Joe's conviction that she will escape this sinister world. A novel that leaves you heart-stricken and seduced. --Le Monde Dramatic tension is evident from the very beginning of this fierce and dark novel, well served by terse, direct and brilliant prose. The characters are strong, seemingly right beside us, nervous, anxious, overworked, and perspiring under the southern sun. -- Le Temps Impresses with its mastery of rhythm and atmospheres, its acute powers of observation and the power of its writing, fierce, physical, and intense. - Telerama