The Casual Vacancy

When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.

Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war.

Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils... Pagford is not what it first seems.

And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

A big novel about a small town, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults. It is the work of a storyteller like no other.

J.K. Rowling is the author of the much-loved series of seven Harry Potter novels, originally published between 1997 and 2007. Along with the three companion books written for charity, the series has sold over 500 million copies, been translated into over 80 languages, and made into eight blockbuster films.

Originally written by J.K. Rowling in aid of Comic Relief as a Hogwarts textbook, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them became the inspiration behind a new and original five-film series for Warner Bros., the first of which was released in 2016. The second film in the series, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, was released in November 2018.

J.K. Rowling has collaborated with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany on a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened in London's West End in 2016 and on Broadway in 2018, and will have further worldwide openings in 2019.

J.K. Rowling also writes the Cormoran Strike crime novels, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The fourth in this series was published in autumn 2018. The Strike books have been adapted for television for BBC and HBO television by Brontë Film & Television. J.K. Rowling is also the author of The Casual Vacancy, a standalone novel for adults, published in 2012.