NATIONAL BESTSELLER • MAN BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Possession: a story that spans the Victorian era through World War I about a children’s author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the lives of her family and loved ones.
“Majestic ... Dazzling ... Wonderful.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
 
When children’s book author Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of a museum, she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends. But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. The Wellwoods’ personal struggles and hidden desires unravel against a breathtaking backdrop of the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, as the Edwardian period dissolves into World War I and Europe’s golden era comes to an end.