Shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016
 
As she woke up in the pod she remembered three things. First, she was travelling through open space. Second, she was about to start a new job, one she could not screw up. Third, she had bribed a government official into giving her a new identity file. None of this information was new, but it wasn’t pleasant to wake up to.
 
When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much.
 
The Wayfarer, a patched-up ship that's seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past. But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer.
 
The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptilian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful - exactly what Rosemary wants.
 
Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet. They'll earn enough money to live comfortably for years...if they survive the long trip through war-torn interstellar space without endangering any of the fragile alliances that keep the galaxy peaceful.
 
But Rosemary isn't the only person on board with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed.
 
Originally a self-published novel that became a word-of-mouth bestseller, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet launched a powerful and exciting new voice in science fiction and an original new universe further uncovered in the stand-alone sequel A Closed and Common Orbit. When it comes to future novels, as the author herself says: ‘there's still a lot of space to cover.’