Rachel Joyce

There is a heatwave across Europe.

Goose and his three sisters gather at the family's house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy.

Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece. Now he is dead and there is no sign of a painting.

Although the siblings have always been close, as they search for answers over that summer, the things they learn - about themselves, their father and their new stepmother - will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father's legacy truly is.

In this poignant parallel story to 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' (10174), Queenie Hennessy makes a journey of her own, a journey that is even bigger than Harold’s; one word after another, she promises to confess long-buried truths... and the devastating secret she has kept from Harold for all these years.

Maureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she now shares with her husband Harold after his iconic walk across England. Now, ten years later, an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, and this time it is Maureen's turn to make her own journey. But Maureen is not like Harold. She struggles to bond with strangers, and the landscape she crosses has changed radically. She has little sense of what she'll find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she must get there.

It is 1950. In a devastating moment of clarity, Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job and advertises for an assistant to accompany her on an expedition. She is going to travel to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid Pretty, in her unlikely pink travel suit, is not the companion Margery had in mind. And yet together they will be drawn into an adventure that will exceed every expectation.

They will risk everything, break all the rules, and at the top of a red mountain, discover their best selves. This is a story that is less about what can be found than the belief it might be found; it is an intoxicating adventure story but it is also about what it means to be a woman and a tender exploration of a friendship that defies all boundaries.

1988. Frank owns a music shop. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need. Then into his life walks Ilse Brauchmann, a mysterious woman with a pea-green coat and eyes as black as vinyl.. Ilse asks Frank to teach her about music. But Ilse is not what she seems. And Frank has old wounds that threaten to re-open and a past he will never leave behind ...

Summer, 1972: Eleven year old Byron begins ‘Operation Perfect’, a hapless mission to rescue his mother from impending crisis. Winter, present day: Jim cleans tables in the local café, a solitary figure struggling with OCD. Little would seem to connect them except two seconds that can change everything...

Seven linked stories set in the Christmas holidays - all as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be.

Rachel Joyce captured the hearts of millions with her bestselling debut novel, which told the moving tale of an ordinary man, Harold Fry, who embarks on an epic journey to deliver a message and save a life. But Harold's story began its life on radio, in the award-winning play which opens this collection: To Be A Pilgrim, starring Anton Lesser, Anna Massey and Niamh Cusack. Here, too, is an adaptation of the companion novel, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, with Sophie Thompson as Queenie; as well as a collection of linked Christmas tales, A Snow Garden and Other Stories, read by the author herself.