Venus, Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell

Venus, Vanishing is the blisteringly passionate and page-turning debut novel from Rebecca Birrell, of desire, art, and the stories lost to the darkness of history – for readers of Sarah Waters, Yael van der Wouden, and Alice Winn.

Berlin, 1928. Hannah is new to the pleasures and freedoms of the city. An artist, a runaway, she is building a new life, loving without boundaries and sketching with a cutting edge.

But the party is ending. Hannah begins a recklessly consuming affair with a powerful man’s wife and it soon threatens to do more than ruin both of their reputations. People are disappearing. The shadows of something unspeakable are growing darker. Her art could be the thing that secures her survival – or will deny her any chance of escape.

The world of 1930’s Berlin becomes a lethal game of survival for two women consumed by desire and art, in a blisteringly passionate and defiant story of resistance.

About the Author: Rebecca Birrell is a Research Affiliate at The Fitzwilliam Museum and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of St Andrews. Her first book, This Dark Country: Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early 20th Century was awarded an Antonia Frazer Award for a Biography in Progress by the Society of Authors, and was chosen as a Guardian/Observer Art Book of the Year. Venus, Vanishing is her first novel.

16 Jul 2026
 

Venus, Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell ISBN 9781035085774