A woman disappears, leaving behind an incendiary diary chronicling a journey of sexual awakening. To all who knew her, she was the Good Wife: happy, devoted, content. But the diary reveals a secret self, one who's discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own. Inspired by a manuscript written by an anonymous Elizabethan woman who dared to speak of what women truly desire, she tastes for the first time the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, How long can she sustain a perilous double life?
In writing The Bride Stripped Bare, the author decided to remain anonymous so she would feel absolutely free to explore a woman's inner world. As she writes in her afterword, "That doesn't mean this book is a memoir; it's many things to me, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and fact, a quilt pieced together not only from my stories but those of my friends."
Coolly impassioned, The Bride Stripped Bare tells startling truths about love and sex. It will make you question whether it is ever entirely possible to know another person.

The Bride Stripped Bare: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Gemmell, Nikki

Contemporary

Harper

GET OUT. BEFORE THEY SAVE YOU.\nEarly 1800s. Thomasina Trelora is on her way to the colonies. Her fate: to be married to a clergyman she's never met. As the Australian coastline comes into view a storm wrecks the ship and leaves her lying on the rocks, near death. She's saved by an Aboriginal man who carries her to the door of a grand European house, Willowbrae. 
Tom is now free to be whoever she wants to be and a whole new life opens up to her. But as she's drawn deeper into the intriguing life of this grand estate, she discovers that things aren't quite as they seem. She stumbles across a horrifying secret at the heart of this world of colonial decorum – and realises she may have exchanged one kind of prison for another. 
The Ripping Tree is an intense, sharp shiver of a novel, which brings to mind such diverse influences as The Turn of the Screw, Rebecca and the film Get Out as much as it evokes The Secret River. A powerful and gripping tale of survival written in Nikki Gemmell's signature lyrical and evocative prose, it examines the darkness at the heart of early colonisation. Unsettling, audacious, thrilling and unputdownable.

The Ripping Tree: Thrilling new fiction for fans of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca from the international bestselling author

United States

The Borough Press

A woman disappears, leaving behind an incendiary diary chronicling a journey of sexual awakening. To all who knew her, she was the good wife: happy, devoted, content. But the diary reveals a secret self, one who's discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own. She has discovered a forgotten Elizabethan manuscript that dares to speak of what women truly desire, and inspired by its revelations, she tastes for the first time the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is: How long can she sustain a perilous double life?

Dramas & Plays

Harper-perennial

The Bride Stripped Bare Intl

Fourth Estate in America

From the author of the international bestseller The Bride Stripped Bare comes the raw and resonant story of a middle-aged wife and mother who attempts to reclaim her lost sense of self by exploring the memory of an old love affair, the consequences of which have remained unresolved for years. Nikki Gemmell is “one of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time” (Time Out New York), and With My Body is a unique and captivating novel. Poetic and boldly, unabashedly sensual, Gemmell’s gorgeous writing and explosive content evoke the seductive power of The Secret Life Of Catherine M, Damage, and The Story of O, but this instant classic bears a modern insight into present-day sexuality and that could only come from the intimate and invigorating voice of Nikki Gemmell.

With My Body: A Novel

From internationally bestselling author Nikki Gemmell comes a tantalizing story of love within marriage—and alongside it.
Under her Chanel suit and designer lingerie, Connie Carven is no longer the typical banker's wife. When Cliff's horrible skiing accident shifts the balance of their relationship, Connie becomes a willing submissive to her husband's every desire. Cliff is eager to explore new, and troubling, avenues of passion. Connie, ever the dutiful wife, follows wherever he leads. While at first she enjoys a perverse sense of freedom within the ever-tightening bonds of her marriage, Cliff's dark desires soon consume her entirely. She finds herself surrendering to an act that will forever remind her that she belongs to her husband alone—to be unlocked only by him, whenever he pleases.
But it is also this act that awakens Connie from the numbness that has taken over her life. And when she encounters someone new in the communal garden of her Notting Hill home, she discovers the thrill of true intimacy . . . and the price of risking everything for it.
The author of the bestselling phenomenon The Bride Stripped Bare and the exquisite With My Body, Nikki Gemmell brings erotic writing into the twenty-first century. In I Take You she looks to the classic Lady Chatterley's Lover for inspiration, reimagining D. H. Lawrence's celebrated tale as a brutally honest and deeply sensual modern love story.

I Take You: A Novel (P.S.)

In her first novel Nikki Gemmell delves into the emotional depth of love and loss set in the wilderness of Antarctica. Faced with the opportunity of a lifetime, Fin learns the rules and taboos of community life in Antarctica. Amid the land of mythical tragedies, of long journeys into darkness and death, of soles falling from feet and being strapped back on, of teeth freezing and splitting, fingers dying, toenails coming away - Fin breaks the strictest taboo of all - she falls in love. Fin gets caught in a chain of events that lead to a shattering conclusion.

Shiver: A novel

Vintage

Snip Freeman is a painter with a waitressing problem, a wanderer in search of her past. She'll visit a place, find a man and a studio and a scrap of a job, until the zing of uncertainty pulls her on. She is anchored nowhere, touches the earth lightly. Then she turns her back on a drowning man. And suddenly she has reason to stay put.Taking up Shiver's theme of women in tough places, Cleave illuminates the troubled relationship between wandering and settling, belonging and freedom, parents and children, partners and lovers; between white and black, secretive silences and the truths. It is a novel of great power and lyricism.

Cleave: A novel

A legacy from her grandmother sends Phillipa "Snip" Freeman, a tough-minded artist and wanderer, on a personal odyssey through the vast outback of Australia in search of her long-lost father and answers to some of her unexplained questions about her troubled childhood. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.

Alice Springs

Genre Fiction

Penguin Group USA

Cleave (hb)

Picador

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gemmell, Nikki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gemmell, Nikki

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gemmell, Nikki. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Bride Stripped Bare: A Novel

The Ripping Tree: Thrilling new fiction for fans of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca from the international bestselling author

The Bride Stripped Bare: A Novel

The Bride Stripped Bare Intl

With My Body: A Novel

I Take You: A Novel (P.S.)

Shiver: A novel

Cleave: A novel

Alice Springs

Cleave (hb)