Jamie’s tyres squealed to a halt. Standing in the glare of the headlights was an apparition dressed in a puffy shirt with a garish flower pattern. It wore oversized red shoes, striped pants and white face paint. It stared at him with ungodly boggling eyes, then turned away…

This seemingly random incident triggers a nightmarish chain of events as Jamie finds he is being stalked by a trio of gleefully sadistic clowns who deliver a terrifying ultimatum: you have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?

Jamie is plunged into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between hell and earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place, peopled by the gruesome, grotesque and monstrous, where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself - for when he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead.

Chilling and highly original, The Pilo Family Circus is a fast-paced and darkly funny novel by an exciting new voice in Australian fiction.