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Extracts

A tribute to Helen Dunmore, from the pen of her son Patrick

The Greatcoat

A chilling and atmospheric ghost story by the author of Birdcage Walk, Exposure and The Lie

You won't find plastic fangs or Dulux blood in Helen Dunmore's perfect little ghost story ... Dunmore conveys a shivery menace and concealed tragedy; this is the most elegant literary flesh-creeper since Susan Hill's The Woman in Black.

This is a haunting and exquisitely crafted tale where the line between the real and the imaginary becomes blurred.

The Greatcoat is a well-written ghost story that observes the traditions of the genre without subsiding into pastiche ... Dunmore uses motifs and themes as a kind of Greek chorus ... these are subtly deployed, and enhance the atmosphere in this disturbing, thoughtful novel.

An atmospheric and accomplished ghost story.

A taut, elegantly written ghost story… Wielding her skill at bringing history to life in the small, dismal details of the post-war period, and showing off her talents as a poet in her mesmerising depiction of possession, Dunmore is on fine form here.

The art of the ghost story requires delicate balance. The supernatural itself does not have to be convincing. It is enough that characters in the fiction are convinced by it. This was Scott's way in, to give only one example, The Bride of Lammermoor and also Buchan's in that remarkable and uncanny novel, The Dancing Floor and in his short stories about the supernatural. It is Dunmore's here too, in this beautifully written tale, and because she achieves this delicate balance, it comes off splendidly.

the best kind of ghostly tale - one that has you pondering its implications - and checking the back of dark cupboards - long after the final page

Helen Dunmore's exquisitely written ghost story works its way with spooky subtlety into your imagination.

A powerful evocation of period, and the tricks the mind can play on itself, its unadorned prose builds a chilling effect reminiscent of The Turn of the Screw.

Her latest work is not a new departure but a development of familiar strengths: drawing us in to a compelling fictional world, populated by characters who live and love with vivid self-awareness. Dunmore has a sharp eye, and a fine-pen, for the hairline cracks in a new marriage ... Dunmore's gift, familiar from The Siege and The Betrayal, is to use a finely drawn domestic setting to show the great events of European history on a human scale.

An unnerving breathlessly told love affair

I love ghost stories and this one is hugely atmospheric.

I really enjoyed the authentic wartime detail in this book.

The ideal ghost story for Halloween ... Full of suspense ... If you loved Woman in Black, you'll love this atmospheric tale.

This book is spooky, erotic and evocative. We loved it.

Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children’s author and poet who will be remembered for the depth and breadth of her fiction. Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive simplicity that made all of her work accessible and heartfelt, her writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and her extraordinary ability to capture the presence of the past. 
 
Her first novel, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led D. H. Lawrence to be expelled from Cornwall on suspicion of spying, and won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and she went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller with The Siege, which was described by Antony Beevor as a ‘world-class novel’ and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize. Published in 2010, her eleventh novel, The Betrayal, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Lie in 2014 was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the 2015 RSL Ondaatje Prize. 
 
Her final novel, Birdcage Walk, deals with legacy and recognition – what writers, especially women writers, can expect to leave behind them – and was described by the Observer as ‘the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written’. She died in June 2017, and in January 2018, she was posthumously awarded the Costa Prize for her volume of poetry, Inside the Wave.

In the winter of 1952, Isabel Carey moves to the East Riding of Yorkshire with her husband Philip, a GP. With Philip spending long hours on call, Isabel finds herself isolated and lonely as she strives to adjust to the realities of married life. 
 
Woken by intense cold one night, she discovers an old RAF greatcoat hidden in the back of a cupboard. Sleeping under it for warmth, she starts to dream. And not long afterwards, while her husband is out, she is startled by a knock at her window. 
 
Outside is a young RAF pilot, waiting to come in. 
 
His name is Alec, and his powerful presence both disturbs and excites her. Her initial alarm soon fades, and they begin an intense affair. But nothing has prepared her for the truth about Alec's life, nor the impact it will have on hers ...

A Spell of Winter

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 
 
'Tense, dark and intensely gripping . . . written so seductively that passages sing out from the page ' Sunday Times 
 
Cathy and her brother, Rob, don't know why they have been abandoned by their parents. Alone in their grandfather's decaying country house, they roam the wild grounds freely with minds attuned to the rural wilderness. Lost in their own private world, they seek and find new lines to cross. 
 
But as the First World War draws closer, crimes both big and small threaten the delicate refuge they have built. Cathy will do anything to protect their dark Eden from anyone, or anything, that threatens to destroy it. 
 
'An electrifying and original talent, a writer whose style is characterized by a lyrical, dreamy intensity' Guardian 
 
'Stops you in your tracks with the beauty of its writing' Observer 
 
'Has a strong and sensuous magic' The Times 
 
'Her spellbinding, lyrical prose is close to poetry' Daily Mail

A marvellous novel about forbidden passions and the terrible consequences of thwarted love. Dunmore is one of the finest English writers

A hugely involving story which often stops you in your tracks with the beauty of its writing

An electrifying and original talent, a writer whose style is characterized by a lyrical, dreamy intensity

Tense, dark and intensely gripping . . . written so seductively that passages sing out from the page

Her prose is poetic in its emotional range and intensity

Unsettling love and stifled horror create and then destroy the claustrophobic world of this lush, literary Gothic set in turn-of-the-century England. In true Gothic fashion, terror, violence and eroticism collect beneath every dark surface. . . . A finely crafted, if disturbing, literary page-turner

It bears the distinctive lyrical beauty of its predecessors . . . Helen Dunmore is an unusually fine writer. There is a strong and sensuous magic to A Spell of Winter

Immensely sad, quite beautiful, and deserves to be read by all lovers of good novel

Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children's author and poet. She published twelve novels including Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the inaugural Orange Prize in 1996; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby and House of Orphans. She was posthumously awarded the Costa 2017 prize for her poetry collection Inside the Wave.

Cathy and her brother, Rob, don't know why they have been abandoned by their parents. Alone in their grandfather's decaying country house, they roam the wild grounds freely with minds attuned to the rural wilderness. Lost in their own private world, they seek and find new lines to cross. But as the First World War draws closer, crimes both big and small threaten the delicate refuge they have built. Cathy will do anything to protect their dark Eden from anyone, or anything, that threatens to destroy it.

Girl, Balancing

A powerful, moving and exquisite short story collection, published posthumously, from the bestselling and prize-winning author Helen Dunmore

This posthumous collection from the much-loved author, focusing on motherhood, war and women under threat, is an act of tender commemoration…  there are new departures on the themes that preoccupied Dunmore: childhood, motherhood, war, friendship, forgotten lives.

Wisdom and wit shine out from Helen Dunmore’s last stories…The simplicity of the writing is deceptive; Dunmore manages to say a lot about families, about the mystery of creativity, and the shock of seeing someone you thought you knew in a new light.

Dunmore’s gift for period detail combines with the respect she has for her characters’ inner lives to produce an effect that is oddly moving.

Dunmore’s love of history glints and gleams in this elegant, posthumous collection

Whether musing on a portrait of John Donne or a friendship between two widows, the late, much missed Dunmore always has something worth saying

These stories are mostly tasters, amuses-gueules to tempt new readers, and remind old ones of the future works that have now been lost.

I couldn’t recommend these stories more.

It was her emotional concision that made her so exceptional, a quality on ample display in these posthumous short stories, more than 30 of them, some absolute gems.

Dunmore’s skill as an observer and chronicler of human behaviour shines throughout this final collection of her fiction

A mix of historical and contemporary, they’re outstanding and showcase her amazing talent

Dunmore’s writing ranges over a multitude of subjects, from teenagers to centenarians , and all ages in between. With sensitivity and compassion she wrote about passion, family, friendship, happiness, loneliness and grief. She brought an elegant economy of words to her stories, communication her meaning with clarity and finesse. Her family and friend have created a superb memorial to her unique talent and an excellent primer for anyone who has not explored her work before.

There was no story that didn’t hold my attention from its first sentences.

The best of them showcase Dunmore’s knack for shining a light into the hidden corners of women’s experience

We too imagine ourselves in the room with her characters, imagine they are talking, like friends, to us

Lyrical and full of human situations acutely observed.

[A] remarkable collection of short stories exploring fragile ties between passion, love, family.

This collection is the finest swan song of a writer full of sensitivity, talent and an immense grasp of the complexity of human nature.

A reminder of what a tender and perceptive writer she was.

They are stories full of humanity and compassion which witness her interest in women under stress or duress, in the horrors of war, in motherhood and in moments of joy at unexpected times. I’m very happy to have had a chance to read them.

Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen Dunmore 
 
Helen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives: 
 
A girl alone, stretching her meagre budget to feed herself, becomes aware that the young man who has come to see her may not be as friendly as he seems. 
 
Two women from very different backgrounds enjoy an unusual night out, finding solace in laughter and an unexpected friendship. 
 
A young man picks up his infant son and goes outside into a starlit night as he makes a decision that will inform the rest of his life. 
 
A woman imprisoned for her religion examines her faith in a seemingly literal and quietly original way. 
 
 This brilliant collection of Helen Dunmore’s short fiction, replete with her penetrating insight into the human condition, is certain to delight and move all her readers.

Girl, Balancing & Other Stories

This book is the grace note to a lifetime of wonderful writing.

Dunmore’s is a compassionate voice throughout.

A lasting testament to Dunmore’s wisdom, heart and elegant way with words.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Girl, Balancing &amp; Other Stories, by Helen Dunmore, read by Emilia Fox, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Juliet Stevenson. 
 
Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen Dunmore 
 
Helen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives: 
 
A girl alone, stretching her meagre budget to feed herself, becomes aware that the young man who has come to see her may not be as friendly as he seems. 
 
Two women from very different backgrounds enjoy an unusual night out, finding solace in laughter and an unexpected friendship. 
 
A young man picks up his infant son and goes outside into a starlit night as he makes a decision that will inform the rest of his life. 
 
A woman imprisoned for her religion examines her faith in a seemingly literal and quietly original way. 
 
 This brilliant collection of Helen Dunmore’s short fiction, replete with her penetrating insight into the human condition, is certain to delight and move all her listeners.

Birdcage Walk

From the bestselling author of The Lie, and Exposure

This is the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written ... From the start, Birdcage Walk has the command of a thriller … The novel’s cast is marvellous and vivid … A novel that deserves to be cherished and to last.

This powerful novel is a fine final flourish from a gifted writer … The power Dunmore gives to lowly female lives is inescapably moving, their stories taking us on a remarkable journey into the visceral heart of the female experience in Georgian Britain … [Dunmore is] one of the bravest and most versatile writers of her generation … This fine, fiery novel will surely be remembered as one of her best.

Like many of Dunmore’s novels, Birdcage Walk defies categorisation ... a blend of beauty and horror evoked with such breath-taking poetry that it haunts me still ... she has an extraordinary gift for taking the ordinary and familiar and rendering them new. When Tredevant’s growing unpredictability once more tightens the narrative, forcing the story back into the ominous and unsettling territory where it first began, it is easy to see why [Dunmore] has earned a place among the finest writers of historical fiction working today.

Helen Dunmore’s quietly brilliant historical novels are among the best fiction of our time.

A finely wrought psychological thriller … But it’s ultimately a novel about the ways in which we remember and, as such, a fitting contribution to Dunmore’s extraordinary legacy.

Elegant prose and brilliantly researched historical detail … a devastatingly good novel.

Part psychological thriller, part poetic exhumation of the past, it’s a fiery, first-rate historical novel from an author who’ll be much missed

A firecracker of a historical murder mystery story with which to leave her many admirers

Dunmore is skilled at claiming the huge canvasses of history and painting upon them exquisitely detailed human tragedies … Every scene is saturated with vivid period detail but Dunmore’s touch is feather-light.

Dunmore just writes so effortlessly. Birdcage Walk is a joy to read.

Marvellous … Dunmore has the ability to evoke a sense of place and to write passages of thrilling and disturbing action … Dunmore is a remarkable novelist who sets herself very different challenges in each new novel. She meets this one triumphantly. It will surely be a great and thoroughly deserved success.

All Dunmore’s novels grip the reader through her imaginative power … compelling as ever.

[An] engrossing read … A thrilling novel of loyalty, betrayal and revolution, Dunmore once again fails to put a foot wrong.

In a tense plot exploring private and public violence, Helen Dunmore has proven why she is regarded as such a masterful storyteller.

[This] page-turner is classic Dunmore: a subtle exhumation of the past in which long-buried passions seem thrillingly immediate.

Intelligent, precise writing, a sure grip on a historical period; sensuous evocation of inner and outer worlds; delicate symbolism . . . subtle mixture of fiction and fact . . . I have rarely felt so anxious reading a novel that at the same time gave me so much pleasure.

This novel reminds us we all have something to pass down to the next generation

Dunmore’s deft skills in summoning up the ordinary life of a woman buffeted by extraordinary events are admirable.

A chilling drama enclosing a graceful and elegiac meditation on how to love well in turbulent political times

With her vivid prose, Dunmore is a writer who can make herself at home in any era … Birdcage Walk is a gripping read. And while it’s set in the past, this novel has a very contemporary message about the consequences of political turmoil.

Helen Dunmore’s delicate prose brings the atmosphere to life, and through Lizzie we see the glimmer of future feminism; Dunmore’s portrayal of grief is painfully honest and raw . . . This is a perfect example of how hidden stories of the past can be brought to life.

Part Gothic romance and part study of 1790s radical politics … There is a precision to Dunmore’s re-enactment of the past … but she also shows the devastating effects of historical events on ordinary people and how they shape them.

[A] fine novel … In all her fiction Dunmore shows an acute awareness of the interactions between the lives of ordinary individuals and the larger forces of history … It also presents a memorable portrait of a young woman confronting with courage the unforeseen consequences of her choices.

To read Dunmore is to live history rather than to study it ... It’s a wonderful book filled with experiences from [her] writing career

History from below in a commanding novel of revolution and romance

Helen Dunmore’s new novel concerns lives, consequential in their day, that pass away into utter oblivion… The result is a chilling work of domestic horror where no crust, candle nor cabbage goes uncounted

Birdcage Walk offers a persuasively grimy period evocation of contemporary domestic peril facing women, not least in an agonising childbirth scene that has traumatic consequences

A story of idealism and possessive love, with strong and memorable characters

Helen definitely has a deft touch when it comes to history but the vividness of Lizzie and Diner's relationship is what stands out in glorious literary 3D. Speaking as someone raised in Bristol, I'll never be able to gaze down into the Gorge again without seeing that rowing boat. Bleak can be hauntingly beautiful and between these covers Helen demonstrates how

She vividly brings to live the struggle of women’s lives in late 18th century Bristol, and I recommend the book for an insight into Bristol in another time

From the swish of a silk dress, to the whoosh of the guillotine, Dunmore uses words with economic precision to build up the detail and suspense of this novel. Which haunts the reader just as the characters in it are haunted by the dead.

Flawless final historical novel from the late, great Helen Dunmore

A lively and inventive voice … by all account as brilliant as her other books

Early feminism and a hint of Grand Designs: a great mix’

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'Quietly brilliant ... among the best fiction of our time.' Daily Telegraph 
'The finest novel Dunmore has written.' Observer 
'Superb and poignant.' Guardian 
 
It is 1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence. 
 
Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in Radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. 
 
Diner believes that Lizzie's independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him: law and custom confirm it, and she must live as he wants. 
 
But as Diner's passion for Lizzie darkens, she soon finds herself dangerously alone. 
______________ 
Nominated for the 2018 Independent Booksellers Week Award 
Longlisted for the 2018 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

A touching historical novel from the Women’s Prize-winning author of A Spell of Winter

The Betrayal

**FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017** 
 
'Scrupulous, pitch-perfect. With heart-pounding force, Dunmore builds up a double narrative of suspense' Sunday Times 
 
Leningrad, 1952. Andrei, a young hospital doctor and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the post-war, post-siege wreckage. But their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin's merciless Ministry for State security. So when Andrei is asked to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, he and Anna are fearful. Trapped in an impossible, maybe unwinnable game, can they avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves? 
 
The Betrayal is a powerful and touching novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime, and a moving portrait of a love that will not be extinguished. 
 
'Beautifully crafted, gripping, moving, enlightening. Sure to be one of the best historical novels of the year' Time Out 
 
'Magnificent, brave, tender...with a unique gift for immersing the reader in the taste, smell and fear of a story' Independent on Sunday 
 
Novelist and poet Helen Dunmore has achieved great critical acclaim since publishing her first adult novel, the McKitterick Prize winning, Zennor in Darkness. Her novels, Counting the Stars, Your Blue-Eyed Boy, With Your Crooked Heart, Burning Bright, House of Orphans, Mourning Ruby, A Spell of Winter, and Talking to the Dead, and her collection of short stories Love of Fat Men are all published by Penguin. Helen also writes for children, her titles include The Deep and Ingo.

Leningrad, 1952. Andrei, a young hospital doctor, and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the postwar, postsiege wreckage. But their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin's merciless Ministry of State Security. So when Andrei is asked to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, he and Anna are fearful. Trapped in an impossible, maybe unwinnable game, can they avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves? 
 
The Betrayal is a powerful and touching novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime, and a moving portrait of a love that will not be extinguished.

From the bestselling author of A Spell of Winter

The Siege

**FROM THE AUTHOR OF INSIDE THE WAVE, THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017** 
 
 Leningrad, September 1941. Hitler orders the German forces to surround the city at the start of the most dangerous, desperate winter in its history. For two pairs of lovers - Anna and Andrei, Anna's novelist father and banned actress Marina - the siege becomes a battle for survival. They will soon discover what it is like to be so hungry you boil shoe leather to make soup, so cold you burn furniture and books. But this is not just a struggle to exist, it is also a fight to keep the spark of hope alive... 
 
A brilliantly imagined novel of war and the wounds it inflicts on ordinary people's lives, and a profoundly moving celebration of love, life and survival. 
 
 'Remarkable, affecting...there are few more interesting stories than this; and few writers who could have told it better' Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph 
 
 'Literary writing of the highest order set against a background if suffering so intimately reconstructed it is hard to believe that Dunmore was not there' Richard Overy, Sunday Telegraph 
 
 'Utterly convincing. A deeply moving account of two love stories in terrible circumstances. The story of their struggle to survive appears simple, as all great literature should. . . a world-class novel' Antony Beevor, The Times 
 
 Novelist and poet Helen Dunmore has achieved great critical acclaim since publishing her first adult novel, the McKitterick Prize winning, Zennor in Darkness. Her novels, Counting the Stars, Your Blue-Eyed Boy, With Your Crooked Heart, Burning Bright, House of Orphans, Mourning Ruby, A Spell of Winter, and Talking to the Dead, and her collection of short stories Love of Fat Men are all published by Penguin. This edition includes the first chapter of Betrayal, the sequel to The Siege.

A Tolstoyan epic of love and war; life and death...she writes beautifully

Remarkable, affecting...there are few more interesting stories than this; and few writers who could have told it better

Utterly convincing. A deeply moving account of two love stories in terrible circumstances. The story of their struggle to survive appears simple, as all great literature should...A world-class novel

Literary writing of the highest order set against a background of suffering so intimately reconstructed it is hard to believe that Dunmore was not there

A remarkable parable of human survival against the odds

In this wise, humane and beautifully written novel she has written a masterpiece

A searing historical novel. Dunmore vividly evokes the unbelievable cold, privations and violence as people struggle to survive...an extraordinary description of the horrors of the time

An important as well as a thrilling work of art

A moving and powerful novel in which Dunmore employs all her celebrated descriptive and narrative skills...beautiful

A harrowing, urgent narrative of cold, starvation and the battle to survive

Leningrad, September 1941. Hitler orders the German forces to surround the city at the start of the most dangerous, desperate winter in its history. For two pairs of lovers -Anna and Andrei, Anna's novelist father and banned actress Marina - the siege becomes a battle for survival. They will soon discover what it is like to be so hungry you boil shoe leather to make soup, so cold you burn furniture and books. But this is not just a struggle to exist, it is also a fight to keep the spark of hope alive . . . 
 
The Siege is a brilliantly imagined novel of war and the wounds it inflicts on ordinary people's lives and a profoundly moving celebration of love, life and survival.

Exposure

By the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lie. Forbidden love, intimate betrayal and the devastating power of exposure drive Helen Dunmore's remarkable new novel.

Helen Dunmore delivers a deceptively simple masterpiece, a new take on the lives of the men and –particularly – the women caught up in the cold war … Exposure is magnificent

Dunmore packs an impressive amount on to a compact canvas. Full of convincing detail, the novel is as much about sexuality in the age of the Chatterley ban as about Whitehall skulduggery … A dramatic mix of domesticity and derring-do … Like many of the best spy novels, Exposure sets out to unsettle Britain’s view of itself.

Under its smooth, naturalistic surfaces, Exposure has a tightly wrought plot gripping as any thriller. But it is the union of this plot with complex, challenging characters that makes the book such a surprising and fulfilling read…will haunt you for months, if not years.

It is an intriguing set-up, and with Dunmore at its helm this tale of divided loyalties never lets up for a minute … Dunmore is such a class act … she sticks to the human essentials of her story, does not over-complicate things, and comes up trumps yet again.

Hers are expert hands at turning 20th-century history into gripping fiction.

Exposure succeeds as a Cold War thriller as well as a psychological drama. It deals with some lurid events, but evokes the texture of time … It offers in fact what Dunmore does best: a story of “desperate urgency, cloaked in the everyday”

One of our most outstanding writers, Helen Dunmore has drawn inspiration from the classic spy novel for her latest book ... While it has all the thrill and menace of a John Le Carré novel, Dunmore is more interested in the personal ... An atmospheric read full of vivid characters – if you only buy one book this month make it this one.

The danger with ‘literary thrillers’ is simple: the more literary a story is, the less thrilling it can be. There’s a balance to be found, and Dunmore expertly weights both sides. She revels in layers of concealment. Beautiful poetic phrases, quite startling at times, enliven the eye and the mind.

Helen Dunmore's subtle tale of espionage and fear has a refreshingly human scale… It is, in many ways, a romance where salvation comes through a late, unexpected and generous act of love.

Dunmore’s treatment is distinctive. Her work as both a poet and a novelist, is characterised by its rich sensuality and the stark emotional truths at its core. This sensibility, along with the small domestic and personal details at which she excels, transcend genre…

Exposure is the sort of winter read you hanker for…the period is so meticulously re-created that you almost hear the hiss of the gas streetlamps

An intricately observed and emotionally powerful Cold War thriller that combines subtlety and complexity to create a deeply satisfying and moving book

Dunmore is one of our best modern historical novelists and fans of her previous books will be eagerly awaiting this new one. [Exposure is] set during the Cold War and follows a woman determined to protect her family against the odds.

Dunmore is a very astute and skilful novelist… Exposure is as good as anything she has written; and that’s very good indeed

A novel about belonging, loneliness, love and the idea of home.... Exposure is a fine addition to the shelves of cold war literature

Dunmore has always been fantastic on the complexity of people's motivations and the secret reasons they act as they do. This book is no exception ... The textures of the times - the daily lighting of fires, the lumpen food and unwieldy domestic appliances - are drawn with poetic sensibility. It all adds up to a richly satisfying story ... a page turner ... it's as much a surprising love story as it is a tale of spies.

This book is a triumph - a marvellous piece of seamless storytelling.  The characters are so persuasive, as is the period flavour, while the plot is masterly - I kept thinking I could see where we were going next, and then we didn't. This is an imaginative new take on the Cold War thriller, so convincingly told and peopled that you surface from it surprised to be back in 2015.

Dunmore so cleverly interweaves each of the character's stories that as the tale unfolds it has the chilling ring of absolute authenticity.  It’s gripping and page turning and all those things you expect in a Spy Drama - but always laced with her trademark humanity.  I was totally caught up in the story which is paced perfectly. Her best book yet.

Her stories are fluid with a stylish and completely unpretentious skill, and Exposure is no exception … the characters are so superbly drawn.

Displays empathy for social period and how historical forces shape lives

From page one, the marvellous seamless, gimmick-free writing establishes the violent swerving from thankful calm to choking, icy wash of fear … This was my first encounter with the acclaimed Ms Dunmore and, within 24 hours of turning the last page, I had to rush to find another of her works.

Helen Dunmore returns with a book more twisting and layered than her previous, and yet is an intimate and compelling study of people, personalities and the secrets we hide from each other.

Pleasurable narrative and thoughtful prose

This subtle, off-kilter foray into John le Carré territory—a chilling, thoughtful, deeply romantic drama about the collateral damage suffered by those on the periphery of world events—displays Dunmore's gifts as one of today’s most elegant and versatile storytellers.

Exposure is a beautifully written novel that really showcases this author’s talents.

Exposure is a great spy thriller with an emotional side to it ... it gives you great character's and a beautiful setting. Lily Carrington is one of the best character's I have read about in a book in a long while.

A wonderfully descriptive tale of three rich characters and serves as a great way of bringing the private fears and realities of the Cold War period to life and this novel is a story of that time, as much as anything else.

Exposure is about the drive to protect one’s family and the devastating consequences of abruptly finding oneself on the wrong side.

Exposure is a brilliantly plotted novel, it’s enormously compelling and I gulped it down. Dunmore builds the tension slowly, the atmosphere of fear and creeping shadows is chillingly well done.

Just as thrilling and just as unputdownable as any Le Carré

With a poet’s intensity for minutia and symbolism and an always hungry precision for the right word, she creates a real and thoroughly vivid world, a living place, grim and claustrophobic, full in small ways of menace.

Reading Helen Dunmore is like uncovering an old, intimate secret. Her historical detail is flawless. Her narrative focus is never so much on the big public bluster as it is on the private fragility of the human heart - and her latest novel might be her finest yet.

______________________________ 
'A deceptively simple masterpiece' Independent on Sunday 
'Will haunt you for months, if not years' Guardian 
'Outstanding ... if you only buy one book, make it this one' Good Housekeeping 
 
The Cold War is at its height, and a spy may be a friend or neighbour, colleague or lover. 
 
At the end of a suburban garden, in the pouring rain, a woman buries a briefcase deep in the earth. 
 
She believes that she is protecting her family. 
 
What she will learn is that no one is immune from betrayal or the devastating consequences of exposure.

Love of Fat Men

In this collection of short stories, the author takes the reader into a sensuous world of endless winters and midnight sun. As far apart as Finland, the Austrian Tyrol, and upstate New York, these stories come alive to the touch of estrangement, misunderstanding, sexuality and loss.

The enthralling Richard and Judy Book Club favourite

The Lie

By the acclaimed author of A Spell of Winter and The Siege, and set during and just after the First World War, the new novel by Orange Prize-winner, Helen Dunmore.

[A] superb, timely novel of the First World War

Helen Dunmore ... is a poet as well as a novelist, who is celebrated for her delicate language and acute observations. The Lie is no exception. This really is an expert novel.

The bar for book of the year is set sky high by this heart wrenching tale. Daniel has survived the WWI trenches, but returns to Cornwall to find his family gone and home lost. He moves in with a childhood friend, but gets caught up in a lie that has terrible consequences. Tender, touching and totally absorbing.

Never striking a false note, The Lie is one of those rare and arresting novels that make you think and feel with greater lucidity.

The Lie is a tale of memory and loss delivered with quiet aplomb by one of our classiest writers ... Dunmore captures the emotional torment of her hero with tenderness and skill.

Dunmore has brilliantly served up this past to us in a way that does not allow us to forget it

With a shocking twist in its tail, The Lie is a novel to re-read. Written with imagination, intelligence and integrity, it is both quiet and memorable. I predict it will outshine, and outlive, many another new rendition of the war to end all wars.

An enthralling novel of love and devastating loss … Powerful storytelling.

Helen Dunmore, an author who has taken time to build up a following and gradually accumulated those much-required prize nominations, knows what she needs to make a story, and how to go about finding it. The result is a moving account of a young man's emotional life, and what brutality and death can do to it ... Dunmore has done her research and expertly so.

Dunmore writes with disarming simplicity and clarity. Read her novel in a single sitting in a quiet place.

Distinguished by the sensual, compact intensity of Dunmore's prose, The Lie lays bare on its local canvas the invisible wounds of a global catastrophe.

Helen Dunmore's two resources are imagination and research. She's strong on both counts...Dunmore's is a very good novel. 2014 is a very good year to read it.

Helen Dunmore has a talent for gently pulling the reader into the heads of her characters. She writes with a light but sure touch that makes you see through their eyes, smell through their nose...Visceral and elegantly plotted.

The writing, even at its most harrowing, is suffused with poetry and evocative description. ‘They say the war’s over, but they’re wrong. It went too deep for that.’ THE LIE is a heart-wrenching portrait of psychological crucifixion.

If you need any more proof of January's literary liveliness, imagine that you are in charge of publisher's Hutchinson. After 20 years with Penguin, Helen Dunmore (the first winner, remember, of the Orange Prize) has just signed up with you. In which month are you going to publish her new novel, The Lie? But you're probably ahead of me already…

The Lie is a fine example of Dunmore's ability to perceive the long vistas of history in which the dead remain restless...It is a book in which ghosts, perhaps, remain imaginary: but they are none the less real for that.

Orange-prize winning author Helen Dunmore explores the relationship between two First World War soldiers: Daniel, who survived, and his childhood friend Frederick, who died, plus Daniel’s ambiguous bond with Fredericks’ sister Felicia. A dark and haunting exploration of grief and guilt.

Famed for her searing accounts of the siege of Leningrad and its aftermath, Helen Dunmore moves to England after the First World War in The Lie. She chronicles the struggle of a young man without family and homeless amid the quiet landscape of Cornwall, trying to escape his memories of trench warfare.

The Lie by Helen Dunmore out in January, is exceptionally good. Set in Cornwall in 1920, it centres on a man who survived the war but is still living with the burden of it.

An extraordinarily affecting novel by the ever-reliable Helen Dunmore… The flashbacks to the war – and the eventual revelation of how Frederick died – are as crunchingly powerful as you’d expect. Even so, what’s most hearbreaking about the novel is the hesitant, awkward intimacy between Daniel and Felicia. By the end, and without ever losing their vivid individuality, these two bewildered characters in rural Cornwall have somehow come to represent an entire country in a state of traumatic shock.

THE LIE is an enthralling, heart-wrenching novel of love, memory and devastating loss by one of the UK’s most acclaimed storytellers… If you only read one novel in 2014 set during WWI, this must be the one.

Immensely atmospheric, intensely moving story

Nominated for the Folio Prize and shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historial Fiction, and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. 
 
Set during and just after the First World War, The Lie is an enthralling, heart-wrenching novel of love, memory and devastating loss by one of the UK’s most acclaimed storytellers. 
 
Cornwall, 1920, early spring. 
 
A young man stands on a headland, looking out to sea. He is back from the war, homeless and without family. 
 
Behind him lie the mud, barbed-wire entanglements and terror of the trenches. Behind him is also the most intense relationship of his life. 
 
Daniel has survived, but the horror and passion of the past seem more real than the quiet fields around him. 
 
He is about to step into the unknown. But will he ever be able to escape the terrible, unforeseen consequences of a lie?

The Land Lubbers Lying Down Below

An enchanting tale inspired by Mozart's childhood concerts that reads like a sketch for a full-length novel

'Tonight it is the concert. Two Prodigies of Nature are coming to play in my lady's ball-room. As soon as the concert begins I understand why the whole world comes to stare and listen.' 
 
Scipio is eleven years old and a lady's page. He plays the harpsichord, speaks French and German, and sings in Italian. But what was appealing and remarkable in a small child is no longer so in a 'hobbledehoy'. And after he meets the two child prodigies, Wolfi and Nannerl, at a concert, Scipio's fate will change forever.

Protection

Typically clever and artful, a nervy skin-prickler that grabs your attention immediately and then develops into a subtler character piece

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is a chilling tale by Helen Dunmore. 
 
'It was nothing, she tells herself, but her body knows better.' 
 
Florence lives in the country, lapped by miles and miles of darkness. She feels safe there - until a noise wakes her in the middle of the night. 
 
Protection is a short story by bestselling author Helen Dunmore that will cause your skin to prickle and make you ask yourself how far you would go to protect your family.

Counting the Stars

Counting the Stars is a captivating tale of forbidden love and bestselling author Helen Dunmore's tenth novel. 
 
In the heat of Rome's long summer, the poet Catullus and his older married lover, Clodia Metelli, meet in secret. 
 
Living at the heart of sophisticated, brittle and brutal Roman society at the time of Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, Catullus is obsessed with Clodia, the Lesbia of his most passionate poems. He is jealous of her husband, of her maid, even of her pet sparrow. And Clodia? Catullus is 'her dear poet', but possibly not her only interest . . . 
 
Their Rome is a city of extremes. Tenants are packed into ramshackle apartment blocks while palatial villas house the magnificence of the families who control Rome. Armed street gangs clash in struggles for political power. Slaves are the eyes and ears of everything that goes on, while civilization and violence are equals, murder is the easy option and poison the weapon of choice. 
 
Catallus' relationship with Clodia is one of the most intense, passionate, tormented and candid in history. In love and in hate, their story exposes the beauty and terrors of Roman life in the late Republic. 
 
'She reels you in . . . Dunmore has a gift for turning every genre she touches to gold' Telegraph 
 
`Dunmore at her most innovative and daring . . . a powerful and convincing study of fame and notoriety . . . captivating and compelling' Time Out 
 
'Dunmore's strengths as a novelist have always included her skill in sensuous description and her ability to convey the promises and the dangers of erotic love. The Rome she has so vividly realised in Counting the Stars provides a new stage on which to display those strengths' Sunday Times 
 
Helen Dunmore is the author of twelve novels: Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby; House of Orphans; Counting the Stars; The Betrayal, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010, and The Greatcoat. She is also a poet, children's novelist and short-story writer.

An assured, addictive and captivating tale of forbidden love. Dunmore possesses a gift for turning every genre she touches into gold

A highly charged, richly evocative story of illicit passion . . . conjures up the corruption and rampant consumerism of ancient Rome

Dunmore brings to life the people, the smells and the streets of a city where greed is good and lust for sex as well as power is what drives men and women on . . . richly evocative, sparkling

Marvellous, powerful, convincing, captivating, compelling, mesmerising, seductive, inventive . . . Dunmore at her most innovative and daring

A moving, passionate tale of two people in love

Thanks to generous helpings of corruption, promiscuity, hedonism and celebrity, the Roman Empire feels startlingly modern

Elegant, transfixing character-driven historical fiction

Her narrative moves in sensuous leisure...the landscape is exquisitely realised

Dunmore vividly recreates ancient Roman society...with intricate detail and tormented love, it's a must-read

In the sticky summer heat unruly desires stir the blood . . . 
 
For Catullus, the brilliantly witty and outrageous young poet, and Clodia, his older, married lover, a borrowed villa in Rome is a secret, illicit meeting-place. When they are apart, Catullus burns with desire for 'his girl', while Clodia goes her own way among his rivals. Other passions simmer in the heat: the streets threaten to erupt in political violence, hearts sour and contemplate murder, and love and hate are dangerously entwined. Catullus' jealousy grows as toxic as hellebore or hemlock. Poisoning is a Roman art, and there is poison everywhere ...

Your Blue-Eyed Boy

There are things you should know about blackmail, in case it comes tapping at your door...

A heart-stopping novel from the WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
 
'A brilliantly plotted thrilling fable unravelling dark, sad secrets' Mail on Sunday 
 
'There are things you should know about blackmail . . . ' 
 
At thirty-eight Simone has responsibilities: she's a district judge with two small boys and a husband on the verge of bankruptcy and breakdown. When she receives a letter postmarked New York she has no idea that opening it will threaten all she has worked for and call into question her judgement. For the photographs contained in the letter remind her of things she regrets from twenty years ago, and a man she'd decided to forget. 
 
But blackmail, like the heart, never forgets . . . 
 
'A highly charged, haunting novel . . . beautifully wrought' The Times 
 
'Excellently readable, genuinely disturbing' Anita Brookner, Spectator

A brilliantly plotted. thrilling fable unravelling dark, sad secrets

Helen Dunmore

Books by Helen Dunmore

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A tribute to Helen Dunmore, from the pen of her son Patrick

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