Stone's Fall

The long-awaited return of one of our greatest historical thriller writers. A book to rival his international bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost.

I cannot remember enjoying a book as much as Stone's Fall

The assurance and invention with which the novel is written are alike remarkable. Utterly absorbing and a rare delight

Engrossing and intelligent, it's the best sort of page-turner

A juicy mystery with lashings of period detail

The novel is above all a romp, albeit an exceptionally intelligent and entertaining one

Iain Pears has an uncanny historical sense ... splendid return to the grand 19th-century novel

Fireworks, inventiveness and excitement of part three and a curmudgeonly inventor of torpedoes

An indefatigably clever storyteller...witty, laconic dialogue; a galloping pace, particularly in the first and third narratives; the author's silky, fluid prose; and above all the concluding passages, which detonate a series of surprises as poignant as they are grim

A complex novel of mystery and suspense narrated by three fascinating characters...I thoroughly recommend this title

Pears is in a class of his own; no one else could possibly succeed in making the world of big finance so hugely entertaining.

this thoughtful, thoroughly satisfying novel... clever storytelling to reach imaginative heights

Iain Pears was born in 1955. He is the author of seven detective novels, a book of art history and countless articles on artistic, financial and historical subjects, and three novels, An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Dream of Scipio and The Portrait.

John Stone, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances. His beautiful young widow commissions a journalist to carry out an unusual bequest in his will but as he begins his research he soon discovers a story far more complex than he could have ever imagined... 
 
As the story moves backwards through time, from London in 1909 to Paris in 1809, before concluding in Venice in 1867, the mystery of John Stone's life and loves begins to unravel. The result is a spellbinding novel that is both a quest for the truth, a love story that spans decades and a compelling murder mystery.

The Dream Of Scipio

A dark, erudite and utterly compelling novel from the author of An Instance of the Fingerpost and Stone's Fall.

Combining the visceral pleasures of a thriller with the more intellectual excitements of a novel of ideas... Beautifully constructed...never less than engrossing

Vivid, admirably imagined, ultimately very moving...This is a novel of the very highest ambition...immediate, sensuous, beautiful

Combines dazzling erudition with assured narrative skills to offer glimpses of some of history's darkest corners, and stark and timely challenges to the very notions of civilisation and progress

A dazzling hall of mirrors... Ferociously ambitious... Illumined by a fizzing passion for the recondite

Iain Pears was born in Coventry in 1955. Educated at Wadham College, Oxford, he has worked as a journalist, an art historian and a television consultant. He is the author of several highly praised detective novels, a book of art history, countless articles on artistic, financial and historical subjects, An Instance of the Fingerpost and Stone's Fall.

Dark, erudite and like An Instance of the Fingerpost, utterly compelling, The Dream of Scipio confirms Iain Pears as one of Britain's most imaginative novelists 
 
Set in Provence at three different critical moments of Western Civilisation - the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Black Death in the fourteenth, and the Second World War in the twentieth - The Dream of Scipio follows the fortunes of three men: Manlius Hippomanes, a Gallic aristocrat obsessed with the preservation of Roman civilisation, Olivier de Noyen, a poet, and Julien Barneuve, an intellectual who joins the Vichy government. The story of each man is woven through the narrative, linked by the classical text that gives the book its title, and by each man's love for an extraordinary woman. 
 
‘Irresistibly seizes the imagination’ Evening Standard

Iain Pears

One of the very best historical novels ever written

The kind of book that has you reading it by torchlight under the bedclothes. An historical detective story set to rival The Name of the Rose, it provides the rare pleasure of combining an intricate plot with insight into the political intrigues of Restoration England

Pear's novel interweaves the grand narratives and the personal tragedies of history with a slippery thriller of audacious ingenuity

A deeply scholarly thriller, but with the learning worn lightly and all the elements of the plot clicking together smoothly

The best fiction I have read in a long time

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

Anyone who reads this will want to tell their friends about it... This is a novel that combines the simple pleasures of Agatha Christie with the intellectual subtlety of Umberto Eco, don't let it pass by unread

A fictional tour de force which combines erudition with mystery

Brilliantly researched and imagined...a remarkable achievement

Plenty of politics, high and low and the portrayal of college life and vicious, teeming with sycophants and thick with double dealing

Pears brings to life a vibrant 17th-century world...a tour de force

Crammed with period detail, it's as much a novel of ideas as it is of character

Explore the murky world of 17th-century Oxford in this iconic historical thriller

'A fictional tour de force which combines erudition with mystery' PD James 
 
Set in Oxford in the 1660s - a time and place of great intellectual, religious, scientific and political ferment - this remarkable novel centres around a young woman, Sarah Blundy, who stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College. Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologian and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. 
 
Each one tells their version of what happened but only one reveals the extraordinary truth. Brilliantly written, utterly convincing, gripping from the first page to the last, An Instance of the Fingerpost is a magnificent tour de force. 
 
'A novel that combines the simple pleasures of Agatha Christie with the intellectual subtlety of Umberto Eco, don't let it pass by unread.' The Times

Iain Pears

Praise for An Instance of the Fingerpost

One of the very best historical novels ever written

The kind of book that has you reading it by torchlight under the bedclothes. An historical detective story set to rival The Name of the Rose, it provides the rare pleasure of combining an intric ...

Pear's novel interweaves the grand narratives and the personal tragedies of history with a slippery thriller of audacious ingenuity

One of the very best historical novels ever written

The kind of book that has you reading it by torchlight under the bedclothes. An historical detective story set to rival The Name of the Rose, it provides the rare pleasure of combining an intric ...

Pear's novel interweaves the grand narratives and the personal tragedies of history with a slippery thriller of audacious ingenuity

One of the very best historical novels ever written

The kind of book that has you reading it by torchlight under the bedclothes. An historical detective story set to rival The Name of the Rose, it provides the rare pleasure of combining an intric ...

Pear's novel interweaves the grand narratives and the personal tragedies of history with a slippery thriller of audacious ingenuity

Books by Iain Pears

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter