DEVOTION

Prussia, 1836
Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature - she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity...until she meets Thea.

Ocean, 1838
The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their King's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne's heart, along with the miracle of her love for Thea. Theirs is a bond that nothing can break.

The whale passed. The music faded.

South Australia, 1838
A new start in an old land. God, society and nature itself decree Hanne and Thea cannot be together. But within the impossible...is devotion.

THE GOOD PEOPLE

In the year 1825, in a remote valley lying between the mountains of south-west Ireland, three women are brought together by strange and troubling events.

Nóra Leahy has lost her daughter and her husband in the same year, and is now burdened with the care of her four-year-old grandson: a boy who suffers from a mysterious malady and can neither walk nor speak. Unable to care for the child alone, Nóra hires a servant girl, Mary, who soon hears whispers in the valley about the blasted creature causing grief to fall on the widow's house.

Alone, hedged in by rumour, Mary and her mistress seek out the only person who might be able to help Michaél. For although her neighbours are wary of her, it is said that Nance Roche has the knowledge. That she consorts with Them, the Good People. And that only she can return those whom they have taken ...

BURIAL RITES

In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnusdottir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men.

Agnes is sent to wait on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson and his family, who are horrified and avoid Agnes. Only Toti, the young assistant reverend appointed as Agnes's spiritual guardian, is compelled to try to understand her. As the summer months fall away to winter, Agnes's story begins to emerge. And as the days to her execution draw closer, the question burns: did she or didn't she?

Based on a true story, Burial Rites is a deeply moving novel about freedom and the ways we will risk everything for love. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland's formidable landscape, and asks: how can one woman endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?