Corsair signs Claire McGowan’s ‘urgent’ new novel The Quickening

Corsair, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, has acquired The Quickening by Claire McGowan.

Olivia Hutchings, editorial director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Diana Beaumont at DHH. Corsair will publish the novel in hardback in July 2026.

Set in Great Britain in a near future where freedom is the ultimate rebellion, The Quickening is billed as “a powerful exploration of motherhood, sacrifice and the terrifying cost of complicity” for fans of I Who Have Never Known Men, Red Clocks and The Handmaid’s Tale.

The synopsis reads: “The Hope Party’s new laws have transformed Great Britain, with the countryside rewilded, children’s rights prioritised and births on the rise. But freedom is fading. Karen has learned to survive by staying silent – she keeps her head down as her fertility is monitored and watches as her husband’s career thrives, while hers stalls.

“But when her teenage daughter Charlotte reveals she is pregnant, and with abortion and contraception banned, Karen refuses to let her daughter’s future go up in flames. Karen turns to her sister Isobel, a doctor who is initially reluctant to help. But when they learn Charlotte’s pregnancy is ectopic and life-threatening, the stakes skyrocket. Forced to go on the run, and with powerful enemies on their tail, the three women risk everything in a high-stakes race for freedom, and for life."

McGowan published her first novel in 2012 and followed it up with many others in the crime fiction genre, as well as in women’s fiction writing as Eva Woods. She has had three radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and her thrillers, What You Did and The Other Wife (Thomas & Mercer) both went to number one on Kindle in the US and UK. Corsair published McGowan’s first literary novel, This Could Be Us, in 2023.

McGowan said: “This book has been long in the writing, stemming from my horror at witnessing the rollback of women’s rights across the globe, and growing up in a country that also banned reproductive healthcare. I’m so pleased it has found its right home at Corsair."

Hutchings said: “We often look to what is happening in the US around women’s rights and feel a false sense that things are different in Britain – but in The Quickening, Claire shows us how we are already letting it happen right now, without realising. It will be one of the most heart-pounding, urgent, thought-provoking novels you will pick up this year, one that will make you want to scream with rage, but it will also make you want to get up and do something about it.”