Who wrote The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults?

J.K. Rowling wrote The Casual Vacancy, her first novel published for adults.

Little, Brown published the novel on 27 September 2012. It is set in the fictional English village of Pagford, where a vacancy on the local parish council exposes conflicts involving class, poverty, addiction, family tensions, and public policy.

The book is not a fantasy novel and contains no Hogwarts setting. That difference made it a major change of genre for Rowling after the completion of the Harry Potter series. It was published under her familiar name rather than the Robert Galbraith pseudonym later used for her detective fiction.

The title refers to an empty elected position. In British local government, a casual vacancy can occur when a council seat becomes vacant between scheduled elections. Rowling used the political contest as the structure for a broader story about how private problems and civic decisions affect one another.