Maggie O'Farrell

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble? As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance. Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780755308446.Maggie O’Farrell takes readers on a journey to the darker places of the human heart, where desires struggle with the imposition of social mores. This haunting story explores the seedy past of Victorian asylums, the oppression of family secrets, and the way truth can change everything.In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital - where she has been locked away for over sixty years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless - sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But Esme’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit? Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.

We are never closer to life than when we brush up against the possibility of death.I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter--for whom this book was written--from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O'Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.

A dazzling novel from bestselling writer Maggie O'Farrell, winner of the Costa Novel Award—an irresistible love story that crisscrosses continents and time zones as it captures an extraordinary marriage, and an unforgettable family, with wit, humor, and deep affection.Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Claudette was once the most glamorous and infamous woman in cinema before she staged her own disappearance and retreated to blissful seclusion in an Irish farmhouse. But the life Daniel and Claudette have so carefully constructed is about to be disrupted by an unexpected discovery about a woman Daniel lost touch with twenty years ago. This revelation will send him off-course, far away from wife, children and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?This Must be the Place is a novel about family, identity, and true love: an intimately drawn portrait of a marriage, both the forces that hold it together and the pressures that drive it apart. O'Farrell writes with complexity, insight, and laugh-out-loud humor in a narrative that hurtles forward with powerful velocity and emotion. This Must be the Place is a sophisticated, spellbinding summer read from one of the UK's most highly acclaimed and best-loved novelists.

A spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood.Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself. Hedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who wears duck-egg blue ties and introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. She creates many lives--all of them unconventional. And when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own. Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. She doesn't recognize herself: she finds herself walking outside with no shoes; she goes to the restaurant for lunch at nine in the morning; she can't recall the small matter of giving birth. But for her boyfriend, Ted, fatherhood is calling up lost memories, with images he cannot place. As Ted's memories become more disconcerting and more frequent, it seems that something might connect these two stories-- these two women-- something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation. Here Maggie O'Farrell brings us a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. Like her acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, it is a "breathtaking, heart-breaking creation." (The Washington Post Book World) and it is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.

Sophisticated, intelligent, impossible to put down, Maggie O'Farrell's beguiling novels - After You'd Gone, winner of a Betty Trask Award; The Distance Between Us, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; The Hand That First Held Mine, winner of the Costa Novel Award; and her unforgettable bestseller The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - blend richly textured psychological drama with page-turning suspense. Instructions for a Heatwave finds her at the top of her game, with a novel about a family crisis set during the legendary British heatwave of 1976. Gretta Riordan wakes on a stultifying July morning to find that her husband of forty years has gone to get the paper and vanished, cleaning out his bank account along the way. Gretta's three grown children converge on their parents' home for the first time in years: Michael Francis, a history teacher whose marriage is failing; Monica, with two stepdaughters who despise her and a blighted past that has driven away the younger sister she once adored; and Aoife, the youngest, now living in Manhattan, a smart, immensely resourceful young woman who has arranged her entire life to conceal a devastating secret. Maggie O'Farrell writes with exceptional grace and sensitivity about marriage, about the mysteries that inhere within families, and the fault lines over which we build our lives—the secrets we hide from the people who know and love us best. In a novel that stretches from the heart of London to New York City's Upper West Side to a remote village on the coast of Ireland, O'Farrell paints a bracing portrait of a family falling apart and coming together with hard-won, life-changing truths about who they really are.

After You'd Gone is the groundbreaking debut novel from the Costa-Award winning Maggie O'Farrell, author of Hamnet and I am, I am, I am. It is a stunning, best-selling novel of wrenching love and grief.A distraught young woman boards a train at King's Cross to return to her family in Scotland. Six hours later, she catches sight of something so terrible in a mirror at Waverley Station that she gets on the next train back to London.After You'd Gone follows Alice's mental journey through her own past, after a traffic accident has left her in a coma. A love story that is also a story of absence, and of how our choices can reverberate through the generations, it slowly draws us closer to a dark secret at a family's heart.

Gripping, insightful and deft, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US by Maggie O'Farrell is a haunting story of the way our families shape our lives, from the award-winning author of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE. It was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller and won the Somerset Maugham Award.On a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Year revellers, Jake realises that things are becoming dangerous.They know nothing of one another's existence, but both Stella and Jake flee their lives: Jake in search of a place so remote it doesn't appear on any map, and Stella for a destination in Scotland, the significance of which only her sister, Nina, will understand.

When Lily slips on the sidewalk outside a London gallery and literally falls at the feet of a stranger, Marcus, the attraction is instant and electric. Within a week she is sharing this magnetic yet elusive architect's waterfront loft and sleeping in the room that belonged to his girlfriend, Sinead, about whom he will only say that "she's no longer . . . with us." But there lingers a distinct presence, of a woman who seems to have disappeared abruptly--leaving behind a single sexy dress in the closet, a puzzling mark on the wall, and the suffocating scent of jasmine. As Lily falls ever more deeply in love with Marcus, Sinead's aura consumes her with fear and obsession that spark a drama of passion and betrayal

Have you ever woken up suddenly, in the middle of the night, without knowing why? Best-selling and award-winning master storyteller Maggie O'Farrell weaves an extraordinary and compelling modern fairy tale about the bravery of a little girl and the miracle of a snowy day.Sylvie wakes one night, suddenly, without knowing why. Then she sees the most spectacular sight – a pair of wings, enormous in size, made of the softest snow-white feathers imaginable. An angel in her bedroom … a SNOW angel! He tells her that he is here to look after her, for Sylvie is not as well as she seems... Many months later, as Sylvie recovers from her illness, she longs to see her snow angel again. He saved her life! There is so much she wants to tell him, so much she wants to know! Will he ever come back to her? And how can Sylvie make sure that everyone she loves has their own snow angel, to keep them safe, too?

Read for free the first chapter of Maggie O'Farrell's new novel, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, and discover for yourself why this book is garnering so much attention and praise. Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex-film star given to shooting at anyone who ventures up their driveway.He is also about to find out something about a woman he lost touch with twenty years ago, and this discovery will send him off-course, far away from wife and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?Maggie O'Farrell's seventh novel is a dazzling, intimate epic about who we leave behind and who we become as we search for our place in the world.

The new children’s book from multi-award-winning author of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, paired once more with Daniela Terrazzini’s stunning illustrations.When Jem and his family move to the countryside, he doesn’t like his new home one bit. It’s an old cottage on the side of a hill, where strange things keep happening: shoes are filled up with conkers, the stairs become tangled in a woollen maze. Jem’s sister Verity is certain it is the work of a “nouka”, an ancient creature from local folklore that lives deep down inside the hill. Jem, however, is adamant that there is no such thing.But this small mythical creature, so attuned to the hearts and minds of others, does exist. And, what’s more, it is determined, through mischief and mayhem, to help Jem reignite the spark within himself once more.

The author of Hamnet explores sisterly affection and what it means to rediscover your voice—and yourself—in this illustrated storybook.This is the tale of two sisters . . .who had no idea that everything was about to change.Quiet Bea keeps her shoes polished, folds her clothes every night, and alphabetizes her books. Her rambunctious sister Min wears torn trousers and wades into ponds to collect frogspawn. Above all, Min is a storyteller who loves to chat with everyone. But one day she chokes, and the words forming in her mouth never make it out. Words suddenly feel dangerous, unwieldly. Min is no longer herself—not with some strange creature stealing her words, a creature not even her sister can see. But that doesn’t matter, because Bea sees Min. Award-winning author Maggie O’Farrell pulls from her own experiences with stammering to create a realistic portrait of shaken self-confidence and how sharing painful situations with a loved one can make all the difference. Featuring expressive and detailed illustrations from Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini, this book will speak to readers who have ever lost a part of themselves—and found something new in return.

Please Note That The Following Individual Books As Per Original ISBN and Cover Image In this Listing shall be Dispatched Maggie O'Farrell 5 Books Collection I Am, I Am, I I AM, I AM, I AM is a memoir with a difference - the unputdownable story of an extraordinary woman's life in near-death experiences. Insightful, inspirational, gorgeously written, it is a book to be read at a sitting, a story you finish. Instructions for a It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce. The Hand That First Held When the sophisticated Innes Kent turns up on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child. The Vanishing Act of Esme Edinburgh in the 1930s. The Lennox family is having trouble with its youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs.

Vanishing act of esme lennox, hand that first held mine, after you'd gone 3 books collection set The Vanishing Act of Esme From the Costa Award winning, bestselling author of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and I AM, I AM, I AM, comes an intense, breathtakingly accomplished story of a woman's life stolen, and reclaimed., The Hand That First Held Winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award and a Sunday Times bestseller, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE by Maggie O'Farrell is a gorgeously written story of love and motherhood from the author of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE., After You'd YOU'D GONE is the groundbreaking debut novel from the Costa-Award winning Maggie O'Farrell, author of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and I AM, I AM, I AM. It is a stunning, best-selling novel of wrenching love and grief.

Short story.

This free digital collection brings together extracts from Sunday Times bestseller and Costa Novel Award-winner Maggie O'Farrell's six novels. Whether you're discovering Maggie O'Farrell for the first time or revisiting your favourite novels, this collection showcases the work of one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful writers at work today. Follow #DiscoverMaggie to find out more.Special bonus material: find out what inspired Maggie to write her haunting debut, After You'd Gone, and the bestselling Instructions for a Heatwave.

TMy Lover's LoverWhen Lily slips on the sidewalk outside a London gallery and literally falls at the feet of a stranger, Marcus, the attraction is instant and electric. Within a week she is sharing this magnetic yet elusive architect's waterfront loft and sleeping in the room that belonged to his girlfriend, Sinead, about whom he will only say that "she's no longer . . . with us." But there lingers a distinct presence, of a woman who seems to have disappeared abruptly--leaving behind a single sexy dress in the closet, a puzzling mark on the wall, and the suffocating scent of jasmine. As Lily falls ever more deeply in love with Marcus, Sinead's aura consumes her with fear and obsession that spark a drama of passion and betrayal.The Distance Between UsOn a cold February afternoon, Stella catches sight of a man she hasn't seen for many years, but instantly recognises. Or thinks she does. At the same moment on the other side of the globe, in the middle of a crowd of Chinese New Year revellers, Jake realises that things are becoming dangerous.They know nothing of one another's existence, but both Stella and Jake flee their lives: Jake in search of a place so remote it doesn't appear on any map, and Stella for a destination in Scotland, the significance of which only her sister, Nina, will understand.

'You will never understand how the land remembers, how deep the roots grow' A spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy.'Maggie O'Farrell is a miracle in every sense' Ann Patchett 'Maggie O'Farrell takes up a bow and arrow and aims right at the human heart' The TimesOn a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.

This Maggie O'Farrell Bestselling 2 Books Set 1. Hamnet 9781984898876 2. The Marriage Portrait 9780593315088

A fantastic trio of critically-acclaimed fiction novels, the Maggie O'Farrell Collection includes wonderfully sophisticated writing from the author of the incredible bestselling novel The Hand That First Held Mine, the winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award. With thought-provoking plots and moving explorations of love and human emotion, the Northern Irish novelist's classy stories are written with real elegance and no shortage of well-observed characterisation. Including the Distance Between Us, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox and My Lover's Lover, this is a must-have set for fiction fans. Books in this collection My Lover's Lover The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox The Distance Between Us

Drei hochdramatische, gefühlvolle Liebesromane voll unerwarteter Wendungen … DAS Lebenskünstlerin Lily braucht einen Tapetenwechsel – und zieht in ein WG-Zimmer beim charmanten Architekten Marcus. Doch sie hat das Gefühl, dass hier etwas nicht Der Raum sieht aus, als habe Marcus’ Exfreundin ihn gerade erst verlassen, sogar der Jasminduft ihres Parfüms liegt noch in der Luft. Warum ist Sinead so überstürzt geflohen – und sollte Lily das vielleicht auch lieber tun? DAS HOTEL IM SCHATTEN DER WÄ Ein einziger Augenblick, ein Gesicht auf der Straße, das sie an einen Mann aus ihrer Vergangenheit erinnert – und Stella weiß, sie muss sich ihren Erinnerungen stellen. In Schottland in einem abgelegenen Hotel im Schatten der Wälder trifft sie auf den geheimnisvollen Jake, der hier nach seinen Wurzeln sucht … DAS HAUS MIT DER BLAUEN TÜ John war Alices große Liebe – doch nun ist er bei einem tragischen Unfall ums Leben gekommen. In dieser Zeit tiefster Trauer erfährt Alice plötzlich von einem Familiengeheimnis, das so ungeheuerlich ist, dass es droht, ihr ganzes Leben aus den Angeln zu reißen … Fans der Bestsellerautorinnen Jodie Picoult und Kristin Hannah werden diesen Sammelband verschlingen!