In a silent valley stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas Lunel. Its owner is Aramon Lunel, an alcoholic so haunted by his violent past that he’s become incapable of all meaningful action, letting his hunting dogs starve and his land go to ruin.
Meanwhile, his sister, Audrun, alone in her modern bungalow within sight of the Mas Lunel, dreams of exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life.
Into this closed Cévenol world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques dealer from London.
Now in his sixties, Anthony hopes to remake his life in France, and he begins looking at ... more

Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy; from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love.
The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve hope.

First published 2010.

Helen O'Mara is one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns. Her story starts years after the Ranger disaster, but she is compelled to travel back to the 'February' that persists in her mind, and to that moment in 1982 when, expecting a fourth child, she received the call informing her that Cal was lost at sea.
A quarter of a century on, late one winter's night, Helen is woken by another phone call. It is her wayward son John, in another time zone, on his way home. He has made a girl pregnant and he wants Helen to decide what he should do. As John grapples with what it might mean to be a father, Helen realises that she must shake off her decades of mourning in order to help.

With grace and precision, and a shocking ability to render the precise ... more

When Felix Kendall vanishes, his wife Kate is left in turmoil. As she and their children adjust to a hand-to-mouth existence, she looks back on her marriage and Felix's orphaned upbringing in search of clues, confronting the possibility that she has badly misread him. And as Kate gradually discovers strengths she never knew she had, many miles away Felix is coming to terms with just what he has done and lost.

This compelling story of deception and self-deception, compromise and second chances questions how far we can know even those closest to us as it probes beneath society's veneer - in times of adversity, friends fall away and the most unexpected people step forward.
With her characteristic wry wit, Clare Morrall delivers a ... more

Darker and more complex than Hunting and Gathering (Ensemble, c'est tout), but just as dazzling, the second novel by the enchantress Anna Gavalda tells a heartbreaking, unusual story about one man, two remarkable women and an unforgettable transvestite.
A 47-year-old successful architect hears about the death of a woman, whom he once loved - Anouk, the tragically big-hearted mother of a childhood friend - and his life starts to unravel. Charles seems to have everything, but turns his back on the present to go in search of her past and his childhood, falling a long way down.
One day he finds himself on a Paris pavement covered in his own blood. ... more