A sexy, blackly comic mystery, where the impossibility of closure and a desire to fix the past collide.

All-round chaos merchant Nell Jenkins has returned to Aotearoa-New Zealand to fulfil family duties for the mother and brother she's barely seen since making her small-town escape as a teen. But her homecoming isn't the triumph it should be. She has nothing to show for her time in Sydney but a string of failed relationships, crappy jobs and an ongoing HR complaint against her ex-girlfriend, now former boss.

Settling right back into old habits, Nell finds herself sparking a relationship with her dead best friend's brother Mick, as well as the newly arrived and equally unreliable Katya, who is working for once-famous TV psychic Petronella Bush. Driven by her lust for Katya, an empty bank account and the need to come to terms with two life-defining deaths from her past, Nell is drawn deeper into Petronella's charismatic web.

Dead Ends is a beguiling, big-hearted portrait of love and loss, and the bad decisions we make in their wake.

‘It's mordant and wryly observed. Byres has an easy feel for the claustrophobia of family life and dusty friendships: she knows what it is to be dragged back to the past by your ankles. For all Nell's horror of finding herself back where she started, Dead Ends is an enormously propulsive novel.’ JENNIFER DOWN

‘Samantha Byres's Dead Ends is a perfectly imperfect story about all the ways the ones we love mess us up. This is a queer, dark, funny and somehow ultimately life-affirming story about what all those missing girls leave behind. I devoured it.’ HAYLEY SCRIVENOR

‘Byres is a red-hot new voice in contemporary noir. Her prowling prose is so muscular that every line takes a shot at the title. Dead Ends is a must for anyone who loves black wit, a dark, twisty tale, and a thrillingly flawed protagonist.’ JENNY VALENTISH

‘Dead Ends is immediately gripping: bold, moving and seductively dark. A scorching debut that I devoured.’ EMILY O'GRADY