Turn of Mind

Winner, Wellcome Trust Book Prize 2011.

Shortlisted, Discover Great New Writers Award Shortlist, 2011.

Longlisted, The Gold Dagger and The John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, 2012.

Find out why Nicci French, Donna Leon and S. J. Watson were all mesmerized by Alice LaPlante's stunning debut. Turn of Mind is a psychological thriller of the highest order: masterful, harrowing and compulsive.

Amanda is dead, murdered.

Four fingers have been severed from her body.

Her best friend, surgeon Jennifer White, can tell the police what blade she would have used for such an operation.

But, as dementia splinters Jennifer's mind, she cannot tell them whether she killed Amanda. Or why.

Is her shattered memory preventing her from finding the truth? Or helping her to hide it?

Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer who teaches at San Francisco State University and Stanford University, where she was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and held a Jones Lectureship. Raised in Chicago, she now lives with her family in Northern California. Turn of Mind is her first novel.

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'Really terrific - ambitious, clever and human.' Nicci French

'LaPlante's characters are completely convincing, the plotting masterful.' Donna Leon

'Wonderful. This harrowing exploration of the slow disintegration of the mind is deeply touching and utterly heartbreaking, while also being a compelling page-turner. I loved it.' S. J. Watson

'...a fascinating look at the unspooling of a mind, and how dementia can lead one into the darkest alleys of consciousness.' NPR

'The plot is one of those smart ideas that could so easily have been a disaster of a book, but she's pulled it off with agile and technically brilliant writing...What this book is about is the reader having a front row seat to the deterioration of a once brilliant mind. It's clever, clever stuff...one of the most absorbing novels I've read all year.' Herald on Sunday (NZ)

'This poignant debut immerses us in dementia's complex choreography...Dr. White is...by turns brilliant, hallucinatory, and heartbreakingly vulnerable.' People

'This debut novel is a work of remarkable courage, sophistication and intelligence...This chillingly authentic portrait of a brilliant mind, tragically aware of its own disintegration, is an extraordinary achievement. Highly recommended.' Sunday Canberra Times