Panic

The thrilling new novel from the author of the bestselling Killing Eve series

Escaping online is easy. In real life it won’t be so simple.

Jaleesa, Kai, Ilya and Dani are online best friends, and superfans of the hit TV show City Of Night. Fantasising about the show in their chatroom, they find an escape from their troubled small-town lives. Everything changes when Chloe, make-up artist to the show’s star Alice Temple, enters the chat.

When Chloe tells them Alice is in danger the four resolve to save her, and make their way to California. But fantasy is quickly overtaken by reality. Alice’s troubles, they discover, will shine the spotlight on all of them. And not in a good way. On the run across the American South with one of the most famous actresses in the world, the fans must evade the police, the Russian mafia and the Legion, an absurd but terrifying new far-right movement. Can they keep running for long enough to uncover the truth about Alice, and discover themselves in the process?

#PANIC is a thriller, a love letter to fandom, and an empowering tale of young adults embracing their identities and fighting back in a world that has always tried to marginalize them.

‘A richly imagined, character-driven thriller’ Bookseller

‘Luke Jennings might just have another cult hit on his hands’ Shots Mag

‘All the expected high-octane thrills and spills are there’ Big Issue

Author Biography

Luke Jennings is a London-based author and journalist who has written for the Observer, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Time. He is the author of Blood Knots, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson and William Hill prizes, and the acclaimed Killing Eve novels which were adapted into an award-winning BBC series by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, starring Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh.