The Quincunx Awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters which is given for “the best first novel published in North America”.
 
“His plot is of an intricacy that Wilkie Collins himself might have envied … an astonishing achievement” The Scotsman
 
“A huge swarming panorama of metropolitan life in the early years of the nineteenth century …. Palliser’s unwavering gaze spares us little either in its reckoning of London’s chaotic brutality or the hideous social conditions from which it sprang.” The Sunday Times
 
“One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.” The New York Times
 
“A virtuoso achievement ... It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days ... The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.” Chicago Sun-Times
 
“A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.” San Francisco Chronicle
 
“A remarkable book ... In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated ... It is an immersing experience.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
“To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.” The New Yorker
 
“Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way ... For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.” The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx has been one of the more intriguing literary successes of recent years. … [It] so scrupulously recreated the language and conventions of mid-Victorian fiction, its labyrinthine plotting, its vivid characterisation and breadth of social canvas, that it was an immediate success with thousands of readers hungry for a return to the narrative and moral certainties of Dickens, Eliot and Collins. Deservedly, this unusual and ambitious book – 12 years, we are told, in the researching and writing – became an international bestseller.” The London Review of Books
 
“There is certainly no denying the brilliance of The Quincunx as pastiche. This is not offered as faint praise: Palliser can match Wilkie Collins for the maintenance of suspense and for descriptive memorability (most notably in the scenes of coin-hunting in the London sewers, or at the shockingly brutal Northern ‘school’ where the hero is sent to die), and … he is pretty much [Charles Dickens’] equal as a documentarist.” Jonathan Coe
 
“A modern classic and an astonishing achievement. Palliser has re-imagined the mid-nineteenth century novel with a gripping tale of a legacy whose existence threatens the life of a young boy and his mother. A swarming panorama of metropolitan life, it has, The Independent said, “a plot so thick the spoon stands up in it”. “Another big book but a mesmerising read. Brilliant.” Bookclub, BBC Radio 4
 
 
 
 
 
 
“We are pulled into a confrontation with evil that it is easy to imagine happening here and now.” The Spectator
 
“The moral issues are real and pressing, but without the 'feel-good' factor that attends stories like those of Anne Frank. We are confronted with the question: What would you do? Choices are not clear-cut, motivations are not always pure. We like to imagine we would heroically protect the persecuted if we ever witnessed genocide. This haunting novel challenges us to think again.” Independent Catholic News
 
“The novel’s tension comes from … our knowledge that, as the noose tightens around the family, they will eventually reach the end of the road. … The reader is left to consider – what choices would I make?” The Tablet
 
“The subject matter is not light reading and is a testimony to [Palliser’s] powers that it is impossible to put away.” The Camden New Journal

 
 
 
  

“A big, fat murder mystery. It is a perfectly pitched pastiche of Victorian Gothic ... compulsive reading” The Evening Standard
 
“Charles Palliser returns once again to his Wilkie Collins style of atmospheric recreation in this brilliant new novel. This is near faultless story-telling - a one-sitting feast” Scotland on Sunday
 
“Fans of Palliser's bestseller The Quincunx will be gripped” The Daily Mail
 
“Palliser really is the master of the neo-Victorian genre, mixing deliciously spooky tales with high intelligence and a superior style.” The Sunday Herald
 
“This is, basically, a cracking yarn ... enormously enjoyable ... Wilkie Collins and chums having been effectively buried for so long, it is charming that Palliser should so faithfully unbury them again.” The Observer
 
 
 
 
 
Rustication was one of Publishers Weekly's “Best Books of the Year”.
 
“Paranoia reigns supreme as the twists and turns keep multiplying in this gothic horror show adeptly spun by the author of The Quincunx.” Booklist
 
“Palliser vividly captures the claustrophobic feeling of a small Victorian community being overwhelmed by anxiety and mistrust.” Library Journal
 
“Appropriately moody, lurid stuff” Kirkus Reviews
 
“The gripping voice and masterful plotting swirl together in a relentless undertow of gothic intrigue and dread that's impossible to resist. Not that you'll want to. This is a brilliant read.” Kieran Shields, author of The Truth of All Things
 
“Riddles are ultimately, satisfyingly unraveled and a darker reality about genteel Victorian society revealed than novelists of that era ever dared imagine.” MailOnline
 
“Charles Palliser is a wonderful novelist, and Rustication is a wonderful novel.” Iain Pears, author of An Instance of the Fingerpost
 
“Atmospheric, lurid, and brilliantly executed, Rustication is sure to spin readers into its spider's web of intrigue and violence.” The Independent
 
[Palliser’s] narrator, Richard Shenstone, is so marvelously and credibly naïve that I couldn’t stop turning the pages, hoping he would recognize before it was too late that what he doesn’t know could well be the death of him.” Valerie Martin author of Property
 
 
 

 


“Compulsively fulfilling his need to bed women he does not know, [David] leads a lonely and alienated existence until he meets Lucy, an artist and single mother. Their sexual couplings are described in sensuous detail, but because Lucy is elusive and essentially unknowable, David is still unsatisfied. Darkly foreboding, the drama of their intersected lives builds to a shocking conclusion. … The relentlessly flat, brooding prose, filled with images of decay, fetid smells, cold and death, sets an appropriate atmosphere.” Publishers Weekly
 
 
 




“An obituary tells of a Scottish scientist dying; travelers tell tales to while away the time, then one dies mysteriously; a publisher's reader reports on a trashy story; an academic scandal is hashed over; an avid television watcher offers up his diary. Then names start recurring, similar situations are alluded to. Thus does the author of The Quincunx build up this story of betrayals ... Palliser uses stories within stories, black humor, and parody to make it all work.” Dallas Morning News
 
“Rewarding, inventive and enjoyably perplexing” The Sunday Times
 
 


  
 

“A splendid read. Highly recommended. Excellent enigma! Engrossing and witty. Once started, I could not put the book down. I have read other books of Charles Palliser's and I have never been disappointed. In particular Rustication and the Unburied come to mind for readers familiar with The Quincunx. Sufferance was excellent too. Palliser's books always offer twists and turns and keep readers on the edge of their seats. Waiting for more with great impatience! Paul Adrien on Amazon, 5 stars