Jacqueline Crooks's second novel, Sky City, was published on 6 August 2026 by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK (Penguin). The book arrives three years after her debut, Fire Rush, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize in 2023 — one of the most closely watched literary awards in the English-speaking world (The Guardian).

Fire Rush also won the Sky Arts Award for Poetry, giving Crooks a dual reputation as both a novelist and a poet before she had published a second book of fiction (Penguin Random House).

Sky City is set in a recognisable 1990s London. Its protagonist is Jaycee, a woman whose story begins on the Sky City estate — a block of flats perched above a shopping centre in north London where Crooks herself once lived. According to the novel's acknowledgments, much of the narrative is autobiographical (The Guardian).

The plot follows three lives brought together by chance, as the Penguin Random House listing describes it. The adult Jaycee reconnects with Sol, a boy who offered her tenderness at secondary school. She and a companion named Ella-G travel to Atlantic City in search of a missing father. The novel's title refers both to the London estate and, seemingly, to that American destination — a transatlantic arc that expands the book's geography beyond its north London foundations (The Guardian).

The Guardian published its review of Sky City on 6 August 2026, the same day the book reached shelves. The review describes the novel as an ambitious and lyrical portrait of trauma (The Guardian).

What makes Sky City notable is the speed of the return. A debut shortlisted for the Women's Prize does not guarantee a quick follow-up; many prizewinning and prizeshortlisted novelists take five or more years between books. Crooks's second novel arrives in roughly three, and from the same major publisher — a signal that Jonathan Cape invested early in a writer whose first book performed well on the prize circuit. Whether Sky City attracts the same jury attention is a question for next year's prize season, and well beyond the scope of a publication day review.

For readers coming to Crooks for the first time, Sky City offers a lens on a specific time and place — a council estate above a shopping centre in 1990s north London — drawn from lived experience and shaped into fiction. The ISBN is 9781787336063, and the book is available from Penguin Random House UK and booksellers as of 6 August 2026.