Fiction

In this semi-autobiographical work, a man abandons his life of privilege to live among eccentrics, criminals and the impoverished of Knoxville. Suttree is a humorous, compelling tapestry of life on the edge from Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road and Blood Meridian.

‘Suttree contains a humour that is Faulknerian in its gentle wryness, and a freakish imaginative flair’ – Times Literary Supplement

1951. Cornelius Suttree lives alone, exiled on a disintegrating houseboat on the wrong side of the Tennessee River. As we meet him, Suttree watches the police haul the body of a suicidal man from the water. Amongst the living, the river is home to hermits, sex workers, alcoholics – and a witch.

Conjuring James Joyce’s Ulysses, Suttree wanders the river with a detachment and wry humour, encountering a broad cast of humanity as he does – even as dereliction and destitution threaten the last of his remaining dignity.

‘Suttree is like a good, long scream in the ear’ – New York Times

Praise for Cormac McCarthy:

‘McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute’ – Anne Enright, author of The Green Road and The Wren, The Wren

‘His prose takes on an almost biblical quality, hallucinatory in its effect and evangelical in its power’ – Stephen King, author of The Shining and the Dark Tower series

‘[I]n presenting the darker human impulses in his rich prose, [McCarthy] showed readers the necessity of facing up to existence’ – Annie Proulx, author of Brokeback Mountain

‘Hilary Mantel has a serious rival’ – Sunday Times

‘History never seemed so real’ – New York Times

Lamentation is the sixth breathtaking historical novel in C. J. Sansom’s number one bestselling Shardlake series, perfect for fans of Hilary Mantel and Philippa Gregory.

England, 1546. King Henry VIII is dying. Meanwhile, his Protestant and Catholic councillors are engaged in a final and decisive power struggle to control the government of Henry’s successor, eight–year–old Prince Edward. As heretics are hunted across London, the Catholic party focus their attack on Henry’s sixth wife, Matthew Shardlake’s old mentor, Queen Catherine Parr, and Shardlake is unexpectedly summoned to Whitehall Palace.

For the Queen has a secret. She has written a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King’s attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down.

When the book inexplicably vanishes, and a single page is found clutched in the hand of a murdered printer, Shardlake must help the desperate Queen. His loyalty will drive him into a swirl of intrigue inside the palace, where Catholic enemies and Protestant friends can be equally dangerous, and the political opportunists, who will follow the wind wherever it blows, more dangerous than either . . .

Lamentation is the sixth novel in C. J. Sansom’s gripping historical series. Continue the series with book seven, Tombland.

‘Hilary Mantel has a serious rival’ – Sunday Times

‘History never seemed so real’ – New York Times

Following on from Dissolution and Dark Fire, Sovereign is the third gripping historical novel in C. J. Sansom’s number one bestselling Shardlake series, perfect for fans of Hilary Mantel and Philippa Gregory.

England, 1541. King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to attend an extravagant submission by his rebellious subjects in York.

Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak, whom have reluctantly undertaken a special mission for Archbishop Thomas Cranmer – to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator who is to be returned to London for interrogation.

But the murder of a York glazier involves Shardlake in deeper mysteries, connected not only to the prisoner in York castle but to the royal family itself. And when Shardlake and Barak stumble upon a cache of secret documents which could threaten the Tudor throne, a chain of events unfolds that will lead Shardlake to face the most terrifying fate of the age . . .

This is the third novel in C. J. Sansom’s internationally bestselling Shardlake series. It is followed by Revelation, the fourth book in the series.