Andrew Miller

DECEMBER 1962, THE WEST COUNTRY. Local doctor Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel. WHERE DO YOU HIDE WHEN YOU CAN'T LEAVE HOME? AND WHERE, IN A FROZEN WORLD, CAN YOU RUN TO?

By the Costa Award-winning author of PURE, a profound and tender tale of guilt, a search for atonement and the hard, uncertain work of loving. An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with Maggie, the daughter he barely knows, when he receives a summons - to an inquiry in Belfast about an incident during the Troubles, which he hoped he had long outdistanced. Now, to testify about it could wreck his fragile relationship with Maggie. And if he loses her, he loses everything. He decides instead to write her an account of his life - a confession, a defence, a love letter. Also a means of buying time. But as time runs out, the day comes when he must face again what happened in that distant summer of 1982.

By the Costa Award-winning author of Pure, a stunning historical novel with the grip of a thriller, written in richly evocative, luminous prose. One rain-swept February night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain's disastrous campaign against Napoleon's forces in Spain. Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind - he cannot talk about the war or face the memory of what happened in a village on the gruelling retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he sets out instead for the Hebrides, with the vague intent of reviving his musical interests and collecting local folksongs. Lacroix sails north incognito, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are on his trail, with orders to kill. The haven he finds on a remote island with a family of free-thinkers and the sister he falls for are not safe, at all.

She is sailing. She is alone. Ahead of her is the world's curve and beyond that, everything else. The known, the imagined, the imagined known. Who else has entered Tim's life the way Maud did? This young woman who fell past him, lay seemingly dead on the ground, then stood and walked. That was where it all began. As magnetic as she is inscrutable, Maud defies expectations and evades explanation - a daughter, girlfriend and mother who, in the wake of a tragedy, embarks on a dangerous voyage across the Atlantic, not knowing where it will lead ...By the Costa Award-winning author of Pure, this is a viscerally honest, hypnotic portrait of modern love and motherhood, the lure of the sea and the ultimate unknowability of others. This pitch-perfect novel confirms Andrew Miller's position as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Rok kostí, špinavých hrobů, úmorné práce. Rok mumifi kovaných mrtvol a zpívajících kněží. Rok znásilnění, sebevražd, náhlých úmrtí. A přátelství. A touhy. A lásky… Rok tak odlišný od všech ostatních, které prožil.Paříž v roce 1785. Přeplněný starý hřbitov zamořuje vzduch zápachem a znepříjemňuje život lidem v jeho okolí. Do tohoto prostředí přichází mladý venkovský inženýr Jean-Baptiste Baratte s královským pověřením k demolici kostela i hřbitova. Ale hřbitov má už od nepaměti své místo v srdcích místních obyvatel. Někteří si proto život bez kulis kostela a hřbitovních zdí nedokážou představit. Baratte svou práci zpočátku chápe jako příležitost přispět vlastním dílem k historickému pokroku a coby muž vyznávající ideály rozumu a osvícenství se pouští do odstraňování historického břemene, které sužuje celou Paříž. Ale zanedlouho vytuší, že zkáza hřbitova by mohla být předehrou jeho vlastní zkázy.