From the 2025 Wishing Shelf Award Finalist author of The Other Lotus Girl.

Some houses look like every other house on the street. That is the point.

A month ago, Stuart Henderson went out for Earl Grey and came back with a trafficked Vietnamese girl in his passenger seat. Vân is safe now, in theory. Five of them crammed into a borrowed London house because their own are burnt to the ground. The bruises have not healed yet.

None of that stops Vân slipping out at night to watch a house in Shoreditch. She is sure her lost sister Mai is inside. And she has stopped asking permission.

When the surveillance goes wrong, the group is dragged into a Britain most people do not see. Cuckooed homes where drug gangs take over the front rooms of the sick, the elderly, and the addicted. County lines feeding misery into quiet towns. Ordinary people used as cover for extraordinary things.

Meanwhile, in a seaside town that did not ask for her, Mai is making choices no one who loves her will be able to unmake.

The Cuckoo House is a novel about the aftermath of survival, the weight of debts that were never yours, and whether a family stitched together by accident can hold when the damage is this deep.

For readers of Mick Herron, Denise Mina and Chris Whitaker.

Book 2 in The Other Lotus Girl series. New readers are welcome, a full recap is included.