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Plaything

By Bea Setton
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Brief Description
A chilling spin on girl-meets-boy, in which jealousy and obsession cost the ultimate price... 'I just loved it - it truly wedged itself into my brain. Absolutely vile and brilliant. Plaything is an unhinged melody, and it will serenade fans of the darkest narratives.' — Alice... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$2800
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A chilling spin on girl-meets-boy, in which jealousy and obsession cost the ultimate price...

'I just loved it - it truly wedged itself into my brain. Absolutely vile and brilliant. Plaything is an unhinged melody, and it will serenade fans of the darkest narratives.' — Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller

Anna is smart. Smarter than you, probably. But when she falls for the beautiful, enigmatic Caden, her need to get under his skin, to truly know him, becomes overpowering.

Anna's new life in Cambridge is full of promise - she's the top student in her PhD cohort, she has great friends and she has met an exhaustingly attractive man - but something is a little off. Perhaps it's the routine violence of her lab work with animals, or maybe it's something to do with her boyfriend's icy reserve, but it seems there is a kind of menace hiding beneath the Cambridge dream.

When Anna and Caden's lives become tightly entangled, her obsession with Caden's seemingly ever-present ex-girlfriend reaches a dangerous pitch... Just how far will she go to satiate her curiosity?

'Pleasingly unpredictable' — Daily Mail

'A gloriously tense tale of obsession' — Financial Times

'One that will remain with me... the final page made me shudder' — John Boyne, Irish Times

'A seductive tale of infatuation and the complexities of romance' — Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781804994498

Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 07 August 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin (Transworld)

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 15.0mm

Width: 127.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 200g

Pages: 336

Collections

Bea Setton Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Penguin Books

About the Author

Bea Setton was born in France and has lived in Paris, the USA and Berlin, the city which inspired her critically acclaimed debut novel. She then studied at Cambridge for a master's in Philosophy & Theology, and this inspired the setting of her second book, Plaything. Bea currently divides her time between Berlin and Oxford, Mississippi, where she is writing her third novel.

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  • Plaything
    A chilling spin on girl-meets-boy, in which jealousy and obsession cost the ultimate price... I just loved it - it truly wedged itself into my brain. Absolutely vile and brilliant. Plaything is an unhinged melody, and it will serenade fans of the darkest narratives. ALICE SLATER, author of Death of a Bookseller A gloriously tense tale of obsession Financial Times...
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