Showing results by author "Chloë Ashby" in All Categories

The literary must-read of the summer: a deeply atmospheric novel about friendship, marriage, and long-suppressed secrets. Perfect for readers of Miranda Cowley Heller's The Paper Palace, A Family Matter by Claire Lynch, and Tessa Hadley. Since they first met at university twenty years ago...

When Cathy and Noah first got together neither saw children in their future. Eight years later, they're happily married - and Cathy isn't so sure. With Noah's tolerance for his wife's ambivalence waning, her widowed mother in a world of her own and her best friend yearning for a second baby, Cathy feels increasingly adrift. Escaping into her work in the conservation studios of the National Gallery, she chips away at the layers of overpaint on a canvas from the collection. Will the discovery of an unexpected truth help her find the clarity she craves?

Since the death of her best friend Grace, 26-year-old Eve has learned to keep everything and everyone at arm's length. Safe in her detachment, she scrapes along waiting tables and cleaning her shared flat in exchange for cheap rent, finding solace in her small routines. But when a chance encounter at work brings her past thundering into her present, Eve becomes consumed by painful memories of Grace. And soon her precariously maintained life begins to unravel: she loses her job, gets thrown out of her flat and risks pushing away the one decent man who cares about her.

A "sultry and evocative" novel about the secrets and entanglements between a group of friends holidaying in the south of France. Since they first met at university twenty years ago, Maggie and Will have spent the last two weeks of every summer in France with their close friends, Lydia and Roland...