Sarah Moss

Moving from 60s Italy to contemporary Ireland, Ripeness is a breathtaking story of love and the search for belonging from Sarah Moss, bestselling author of Summerwater

‘The achievement of a lifetime, written by one of the best writers alive’ – Jessie Burton
‘A book of lasting pleasures’ – Eleanor Catton
‘Her work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be’ – The Times

On the brink of adulthood and just out of school, Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy. She has been sent by her mother with strict instructions: to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will seal this baby’s fate, and his mother’s.

Decades later, happily divorced and newly energized, Edith is living a life of contentment and comfort in Ireland. When her best friend Maebh receives a call from an American man claiming to be her brother, Maebh must decide if she will meet him, and Edith finds herself plunged back into her own past . . .

‘Tender and rueful . . . Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence’ – Emma Donoghue
‘One of our greatest living writers’ – Katherine May, author of Wintering

From Sarah Moss, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Summerwater and Ghost Wall, comes a story about the circumstances and the consequences of isolation.

‘A tense page-turner . . . I gulped The Fell down in one sitting’ – Emma Donoghue
‘Her work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be’ – The Times

At dusk on a November evening in 2020 a woman slips out of her garden gate and turns up the hill. Kate is in the middle of two weeks of Covid isolation, but she just can’t take it any more – the closeness of the air in her small house, the confinement. And anyway, the moor will be deserted at this time. Nobody need ever know.

But Kate’s neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate’s son, soon realizes she’s missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk – a breath of open air – falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain-rescue operation . . .

Unbearably suspenseful, witty and wise, The Fell asks probing questions about the place the world has become since the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, and the place it was before. This novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive.

A memoir about thinking and reading, eating and denying your body food, about the relationships that form us and the long tentacles of childhood.

In the household of Sarah Moss’s childhood she learnt that the female body and mind were battlegrounds. 1970s austerity and second-wave feminism came together: she must keep herself slim but never be vain, she must be intelligent but never angry, she must be able to cook and sew and make do and mend, but know those skills were frivolous. Clever girls should be ambitious but women must restrain themselves. Women had to stay small.

Years later, her self-control had become dangerous, and Sarah found herself in A&E. The return of her teenage anorexia had become a medical emergency, forcing her to reckon with all that she had denied her hard-working body and furiously turning mind.

My Good Bright Wolf navigates contested memories of girlhood, the chorus of relentless and controlling voices that dogged Sarah’s every thought, and the writing and books in which she could run free. Beautiful, audacious, moving and very funny, this memoir is a remarkable exercise in the way a brain turns on itself, and then finds a way out.

A suspenseful and chilling novel of haunted landscapes and a teenage girl in danger.

Seventeen-year-old Silvie is camping in rural Northumberland with her father and a group of archaeologists, who are attempting to uncover evidence of human sacrifice. As Silvie glimpses the possibility of freedom with the students – new female friendships and a sexual awakening – her difficult relationship with her overbearing father begins to deteriorate. As the feelings of dread build the haunting rites of the past begin to bleed into the present…

On a day like any other, stay-at-home father Adam receives a call from his daughter’s school. Miriam, his brilliant fifteen-year-old, has collapsed and stopped breathing; her heart has inexplicably stopped.

The Tidal Zone shows the familiar world of a modern family turned inside out. From the complicated lives of teenagers to the complexities of marriage this is a moving, funny and instantly recognisable tale of 21st century domestic life. It confirms Sarah Moss as a unique voice in modern fiction and a writer of luminous intelligence.