Jon McGregor Libros

On a street in a unnamed town in the north of England, perfectly ordinary people are doing totally ordinary things... but then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening and no one who witnesses it will be quite the same again.

Coventry Museum curator David Carter - a man driven constantly to seek the thrill of old stories made new - cannot help but wish for more- that his wife would still be the ambitious and sparkling Scottish girl he once found so irresistible, that his job could live up to the promise it once held, that his daughter's arrival will bring her parents closer together. But Auntie Julia's careless words years earlier have left David restless with the knowledge that his whole life has been constructed around an untruth. And so he attempts to begin anew, cataloguing the joys and disappointments, the migrations and arrivals, the intersecting lives around him. Because once, long ago, a young Irish girl called Mary Friel arrived in war-time London an innocent and left carrying a shame; a shame she still hopes can be diminished by a knock at the door of her Donegal home. There are so many ways to begin, and to live; so many ways to love, and to not love, and to end. Against the backdrop of post-WW2 Britain, Jon McGregor's lyrical, intimate novel explores what happens when our lives fail to take the turns we expect, and the ways we learn to let go of the people we might have been.

From the Booker-nominated author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and So Many Ways to Begin A TV Book Club selection

A WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A genuine masterpiece' Observer 'Spectacular' Maggie O'Farrell 'The most gripping piece of writing I've read in a long time: Sit. Read. Applaud' Jarvis Cocker 'It leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story' Hilary Mantel

Midwinter in the early years of this century. A girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of reporters descends. But the aftershocks of Becky's disappearance have origins long before then, and those in the village have losses, and secrets, and stories of their own.

Tender, sad, funny, and riveting, this is an astonishing collection of work by one of Britain's finest contemporary writers. A man builds a tree house by a river, in anticipation of the coming flood. A sugar-beet crashes through a young woman's windscreen. A boy sets fire to a barn. These aren't the sort of things you imagine happening to someone like you. But sometimes they do. Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.

Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must. As the seasons unfold there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together or break apart. There are births and deaths; secrets kept and exposed; livelihoods made and lost; small kindnesses and unanticipated betrayals. Bats hang in the eaves of the church and herons stand sentry in the river; fieldfares flock in the hawthorn trees and badgers and foxes prowl deep in the woods - mating and fighting, hunting and dying. Bats hang in the eaves of the church and herons stand sentry in the river; fieldfares flock in the hawthorn trees and badgers and foxes prowl deep in the woods - mating and fighting, hunting and dying. An extraordinary novel of cumulative power and grace, Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a stranger's tragedy refuse to subside.

"Our first book, Reverse Engineering, is a collection of seven of the best modern short stories, each followed by a discussion with the writer – on their instincts, processes and ideas on writing." -- Publisher website