Canongate Books

A compulsive collection of the world's most entertaining, inspiring and powerful letters with grief at their heart, curated by the founder of the global phenomenon lettersofnote.com

With an introduction by Fay Weldon.

London, 1593. A city on edge. Under threat from plague and war, strangers are unwelcome, suspicion is wholesale, severed heads grin from the spikes on Tower Bridge. This title tells the searing adventure of a man who dares to defy both God and the state and whose murder remains a taunting mystery to the present day.

Champion jockey Harry Radcliffe is wracked with guilt, reeling from the knowledge that his recent attempt to solve the murder of local prostitute Alice Goode has led to devastating consequences for his ex-wife Annabel and her new partner Sir Jeffrey, as well as horse-box driver John Dunston's suicide. Or did it?

This year's Big American Novel is a high-concept epic that races through one family's experience of the twentieth century