"Combine[s] fast-paced action and imaginative settings with beautifully developed queer relationships." --CrimeReads, Queer Mysteries and Thrillers to Read All Year Long

"Pulley's humorous, heartfelt, and occasionally horrifying tale will stay with you long after the last page." --Paste Magazine, Best Novels of 2022

"Provocative, unsettling . . . explosive." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"An absorbing Cold War thriller." --Christian Science Monitor

"From state tyranny and crimes against humanity to ingenuity and valor under deadly pressure as well as humor and forbidden love, Pulley's brilliantly conceived, vibrantly realized, and complexly suspenseful tale is all the more resounding in the glare of Russia's recklessness at Chernobyl during its latest, horrific invasion of Ukraine." --Booklist, starred review

"Scientific research, KGB shenanigans, queer love, and the heartache of suffering children are just a few of the enriching intricacies Pulley traces with intelligent wit and confident narration. A gifted writer of well-drawn characters, Pulley has given the nuclear noir genre a fresh and stimulating take on Chernobyl-style terror." --Library Journal

"Another historical novel written with panache is Rebecca Stott's Dark Earth (4th Estate), the gripping tale of two women who flee to Londinium in 500 AD. It is a novel that puts a female perspective right at the centre of a time period usually dominated by men's stories. I also enjoyed Natasha Pulley's The Half Life of Valery K (Bloomsbury), an engrossing novel set in Siberia in 1963. The story was inspired by some chilling real events after the cover-up of a radiation leak." --Independent

"With unexpected twists, a paranoid atmosphere, and a fascinating narrator, The Half Life of Valery K is a superb work of historical fiction and an excellent mystery." --Bookpage, Best Mystery & Suspense of 2022

"Pulley's impeccable prose, vivid and shot through with tenderness, lends a glint of lightness to this unsettling story." --Daily Mail

"Based on real events in a surreal Soviet city, and told with bestselling author Natasha Pulley's inimitable style, The Half Life of Valery K is a sweeping new adventure for readers of Stuart Turton and Sarah Gailey." --BookRiot

"History and imagination collide to stunning effect in this utterly beguiling and addictive novel. Unflinching, darkly funny, and all too easy to believe, The Half Life Of Valery K is the kind of book that haunts the reader long after the last page is turned." --Erin Kelly, author of HE SAID/SHE SAID

"Pulley adds to her impressive oeuvre with another exquisite novel. Many of the author's trademarks are on display here: a finely-drawn period setting, a vein of dark humor, a plot blending historical fact and fiction, and a protagonist seeking to do the right thing in the face of a brutal political machine. An illuminating and immersive historical tale." --Vaseem Khan, author of THE UNEXPECTED INHERITANCE OF INSPECTOR CHOPRA

"Exhibiting all the storytelling skills that made her earlier books so readable and popular, Pulley also offers a piercing study of how a police state deforms individual psychologies, personal relationships and professional ethics . . . Pulley's broad perspective distinguishes her work from that of more-routine thriller authors. Studded with memorable characters and deepened by its exploration of thorny moral issues, The Half Life of Valery K is gripping popular entertainment with a pleasing intellectual heft." --Wendy Smith