The Favour

'Absorbing, intelligent and atmospheric... Genius' Elizabeth Haynes _________________________ Fortune favours the fraud... When she was thirteen years old, Ada Howell lost not just her father, but the life she felt she was destined to lead. Now, at eighteen, Ada is given a second chance when her wealthy godmother gifts her with an extravagant art history trip to Italy. In the palazzos of Venice, the cathedrals of Florence and the villas of Rome, she finally finds herself among the kind of people she aspires to be: sophisticated, cultured, privileged. Ada does everything in her power to prove she is one of them. And when a member of the group dies in suspicious circumstances, she seizes the opportunity to permanently bind herself to this gilded set. But everything hidden must eventually surface, and when it does, Ada discovers she's been keeping a far darker secret than she could ever have imagined... 'Intelligent, elegant and immersive' Claire Kendal 'A compulsive story, written with steely intelligence and wicked prose' Elizabeth Buchan

Laura Vaughan grew up in rural Wales, and studied Art History in Italy and Classics at Bristol and Oxford. She got her first book deal aged twenty-two and went on to write eleven books for children and young adults. She lives in South London with her husband and two children. The Favour is her first novel for adults.