The Promise of Happiness is an emotionally wrought and beautifully rendered novel about one family's attempt at reconciliation. The five members of the Judd family, reeling from a series of personal and professional blows, have each retreated into a private world. But the impending return of prodigal daughter Juliet, an art historian incarcerated in an upstate New York prison for helping to sell stolen Tiffany windows, brings the family together for the first time since her incarceration. As Juliet-once the apple of her father's eye-returns to England for her brother's wedding, the family grapples with their conflicting feelings for one another and the moral dilemmas that threaten to tear them apart. Justin Cartwright has won the Whitbread Novel Award (for which he has been shortlisted five times), the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the South African M-Net Prize, and the CNA Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Bloomsbury will publish The Song Before It Is Sung in hardcover simultaneously. He lives in London. Praise for The Promise of Happiness: "The savage irony and probing moral questioning nicely balance each other out, and as an exploration of contemporary Englishness-proud, ironic and ridiculous all at once-it is unsurpassed."-New York Times Book Review "Cartwright's style is perfection."-Seattle Times & Post-Intelligencer "Cartwright unravels the fabric of middle-class lives and dreams with extraordinary candor and precision."-Rocky Mountain News "[A] wholly realized portrait of a modern family through multiple perspectives and a graceful, witty style."-Tampa Tribune "A beautifully observed, emotionally detailed novel about one family's decline and regeneration."-New York Times A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick (U.K.) Winner of 2005 Hawthornden Prize (U.K.) for Best Work of Imaginative Literature Winne. Justin Cartwright has won the Whitbread Novel Award (for which he has been shortlisted five times), the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the South African M-Net Prize, and the CNA Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Bloomsbury will publish The Song Before It Is Sung in hardcover simultaneously. He lives in London.