In the fractured land of Rakana, blue is power, and power is complete control. 

The Governors, draped in their indigo authority, watch from the Edge, keeping the numbers, apportioning lives by rules older than memory.

Sixteen-year-old Tula is not meant to carry a future within her – pregnancy must be taken in turn, and babies born out of turn vanish, redirected by the quiet machinery of control. But Tula dares to escape the prescribed order. Guided by the whispered strength of her grandmother, she journeys beyond the known in a doomed effort to keep her child. But the shocking forbidden truths that she uncovers along the way inform her strategy for how to reclaim her future . . . and ignite a revolution.

A haunting tale of insistence on freedom in a world determined to deny it, FLAX is an unforgettable adventure, a challenge to the very fabric of domination.

This new novel is being published by Foreshore Publishing and will be released in 2026. Available from all good bookshops.

Out of print Lillian on Life being published by Bench Press in July 2026

Alison’s highly regarded debut novel is being re-launched in 2026 by Bench Press. This celebrated and hard-to-find book will be available to readers again with an elegant new cover.

If you haven’t met Lillian, now is the time. You won’t soon forget her.

On a New York morning after a lot of red wine, 57-year-old Lillian wakes up next to her married lover and takes stock.

How did she get here? Where is she going? Can this be as good as it is going to get?

With her own hard-won brand of wisdom, Lillian reflects on a life which began in 1930s Missouri and developed in Munich, Paris, and London. She draws a vivid picture of the unpaved road between traditional and modern opportunities for women, of societal expectations and parental disappointment, of wins and losses in love, and of professional and personal choices, all of which have led to her solitary breakfast this morning.

In Lillian, Alison Jean Lester has created an indelible and brutally honest portrait of a witty, charming, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes heartbroken woman becoming herself during the decades of change following World War II.

“I’ve never read anything quite like it. Hilarious, desperately sad, and utterly compelling. An extraordinary and extremely readable novel.” - Fiona Mitchell, author of The Swap and The Maid’s Room

“It’s wonderful on relationships, parenting and deception, and especially piercing on the consequences of moving too fast.” - The Daily Mail

“Creepy and tense but also full of love and friendship and family.”
- Ian Rankin

“Glide is a novel with all the building menace of the best Stephen King told with the style and compassion of Ann Patchett. The book is as revealing as one of Leo’s photographs: full of choices, perfectly observed details, and, at the core, a deeply human truth.” - Chris Huntington - Author of Mike Tyson Slept Here