The Shining Girls

The Shining Girls

First South African edition cover
Author	Lauren Beukes
Cover artist	Joey Hi-Fi
Country	South Africa
Language	English
Genre	Thriller / Science fiction
Publisher	Random House Struik (SA) HarperCollins (UK) Mulholland Books (US)
Publication date	15 April 2013 (SA) 25 April 2013 (UK) 4 June 2013 (US)
ISBN	(SA) 978-0-00-746456-2 (UK) 978-0-316-21685-2 (US)

The Shining Girls is a novel by South African author Lauren Beukes. The book centers on a time-traveling Depression-era drifter who must murder the "shining girls" in order to continue his travels.

The Shining Girls was published on 15 April 2013 by the Umuzi imprint of Random House Struik in South Africa, on 25 April 2013 by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom, and on 4 June 2013 by Mulholland Books in the United States. HarperCollins had won the international rights to the book in a fierce bidding war with several other publishers.

Unlike her previous novels, which are set in South Africa, The Shining Girls takes place in Chicago. Beukes said that because the story steps back and forth through history, she felt South Africa would not be a suitable setting because "then it would become an Apartheid story". Beukes added that race issues appear frequently in her work, but "Apartheid would have overwhelmed everything else I wanted to do with the novel".

In August 2013, The Shining Girls was short-listed for UK based Crime Writers' Association 2013 Goldsboro Gold Dagger award.

In Depression-era Chicago, a drifter named Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women who burn with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back.

The Shining Girls received positive to mixed reviews from critics.

Writing for NPR, American writer and critic Alan Cheuse called The Shining Girls "a triumph" and "a marvelous narrative feat that spans the history of Chicago from the 1930s to the 1990s". He complimented Beukes on her in-depth research into Chicago's history, and described the plot as a "well-made, though extremely complex temporal creation". A reviewer in the National Post described The Shining Girls as "a thoroughly satisfying thriller" and said that Kirby's charm is "irresistible and irrepressible", while Harper reminds one of the 1890s Chicago serial killer H. H. Holmes.