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Freakslaw

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Discover the dazzling new queer literary horror novel about chosen family and the risks it takes to become the person you want to be.

A travelling funfair of seductive troublemakers arrive in a repressed Scottish town. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s the summer of ’97 and the Scottish town of Pitlaw is itching for change.

Enter the Freakslaw – a travelling funfair populated by deviant queers, a contortionist witch, the most powerful fortune teller, and other architects of mayhem. It doesn’t take long for the Freakslaw folk to infiltrate Pitlaw’s grey world, where the town’s teenagers – none more so than Ruth and Derek – are seduced by neon charms and the possibility of escape.

But beneath it all, these newcomers are harbouring a darker desire: revenge.

And as tensions reach fever pitch between the stoic locals and the dazzling intruders, a violence that’s been simmering for centuries is about to be unleashed…


‘The glittery punk offspring of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus.’ Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

© Jane Flett 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Genre Fiction Horror Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Witchcraft LGBTQIA+

Critic reviews

A transgressive, inventive dark fantasy with believably complex characters.
Crackling with desire, hedonism, angst, violence and sex, this is a vibrant and wildly entertaining read.
The zany narrative races along, stuffed with chaos, magic and fabulously unique characters. It’s brilliant on how badly society treats its ‘freaks’. Mad and fun.
If it feels as if her debut […] is one she was born to write, then good for her. She succeeds magnificently, leaning into every queer punk excess and fantastical delight . . . A celebration of the marginalised, reframing otherness as a source of great vitality and power.
As frightening as it is seductive, this tale of a tightly knit band of outsiders pitting themselves against “that pulsing Calvinist heart” makes for a dark but thrillingly vibrant read.
Freakslaw is nonstop freaky, witchy, outlaw, glamour misfit fantasy - adventure fantasy, sex fantasy, revenge fantasy. Geek Love meets American Horror Story meets The Craft meets John Waters. I'd kill to run away with this circus.
A shimmering blade of a book. Every sentence is honed for high delight — a captivating cast of characters, dazzling language, and so funny — but there's a smart and dangerous bite to all the campy, glittery glory. Freakslaw makes space for feminist, queer anger... and shows it a great time. We've never been so happy to roll up, roll up.
Delightful, delirious and transgressive, this book is the wildest of carnival rides, an open-mouthed kiss with the lingering taste of candyfloss and smoke. Jane Flett has created a queer punk masterpiece and we should all be so lucky to have our lives turned upside down by a visit to the Freakslaw.
Freakslaw is a cornucopia of the carnivalesque, where freaks are fabulous and weird is wonderful. Flett’s sumptuously technicolour prose is as startlingly original as it is compulsively moreish.
Part block party, part call to arms, Freakslaw is almost a new kind of genre. Wild, raunchy, brutal – a madcap funhouse with heart.
All stars
Most relevant
There were some lines that almost made me catch my breath with how evokative they are. The narration was very good.

Some outstanding lines of prose

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