Vanishing Edge by Zillah Bethell

One morning Apricot Jones wakes up to graffiti on her front door and a man in a black Jaguar who calls himself the Baglan Giant looking for her mum. Apricot wishes she were anywhere else, maybe heading over the horizon for a new life!

But her best friend Charlie knows she will always be here, cleaning up the mess the others leave behind.

Set between the Sandfields estate and the sea's edge, and structured by the omnipresent steelworks, this is a darkly comic tale of what it means to be alive, seventeen and living in Port Talbot.

A postcard to the love-hate relationship between best friends, and the love-hate relationship with your hometown. The tidal pull and push of family ties and dreams of escape.

A darkly comic first YA novel from the author of The Shark Caller and The Song Walker (shortlisted for the Carnegie 2024)

Zillah Bethell was born in Papua New Guinea and spent her

childhood barefoot until she came to the UK at the age of eight.

She read English at Wadham College, Oxford, and

lives in south Wales with her family, where she swims in

the sea most days.

Zillah has published many short stories, and three

adult novels on subjects ranging from depression to the

Paris communes, and artist Gwen John. Her work for

children includes four middle-grade novels: A Whisper of

Horses, The Extraordinary Colours of Auden Dare, The Shark

Caller (Winner, Wales Book of the Year and Stamford

Children's Travel Book of the year) and The Song Walker

(shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal 2024). Her

books have been translated into many languages including

Italian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indonesian.