Beautifully rendered . . . genuinely affecting and handsomely constructed. It moves for all the right reasons. (Independent)This is a novel that will pull you in and under and carry you away on its rip tides . . . Anna's plight as a woman whose will is larger than her circumstances is dramatised with tremendous power. Its resonances continue to wash over the reader long after the novel ends. (the Guardian)Egan explains her wish to write a 'heroine-driven adventure story' set at a time when women had little freedom to steer their own lives. She has succeeded magnificently . . . here, the detail serves only to deepen and enrich. Mystery novels, thinks Anna, are unsatisfying in part because they take place 'in a single realm' only. The genius of this book is that Egan successfully plumbs so many. (Daily Mail)A gripping, modern version of a 19th century novel . . . such an absorbing read. (Evening Standard)A fabulous read (Independent, Autumn's Best Books.)Genuinely affecting and handsomely constructed (Independent)Fine turns of phrase, a richly imagined environs and a restless investigation into human nature . . . Egan really looks, and so do her characters. This is a novel that deserves to join the canon of New York stories. (New York Times Book Review)An absorbing narrative . . . brilliantly realised (the Spectator)Egan's first foray into historical fiction, this is a more conventional book than her fans might expect, but it's as darkly immersive an experience (Mail on Sunday Event)Flawlessly done, with enough of a spin on the usual historical-novel tropes to make the whole enterprise seem surprisingly fresh. The flawlessness includes ease of consumption: I read the book in one sitting without effort and without even noticing that I wasn't tempted to check my social media. (Financial Times)

* Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction* New York Times Bestseller * A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2017* Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction* Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, The Guardian, Vogue, Esquire, Kirkus Reviews, Philadelphia Inquirer, BookPage, Bustle, Southern Living, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Immensely satisfying...an old-fashioned page-turner, tweaked by this witty and sophisticated writer...Egan is masterly at displaying mastery...she works a formidable kind of magic." -Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles.

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career as a Ziegfield folly, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have been murdered.

Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller and a wealth of detail about organized crime, the merchant marine and the clash of classes in New York, Egan's first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America and the world. Manhattan Beach is a magnificent novel by one of the greatest writers of our time.