John Connolly

After 17 years, John Connolly returns to the world of his globally bestselling novel, The Book of Lost Things, with The Land of Lost Things: a wonderfully dark yet moving tale of loss, parenthood, and the place of books and stories in our lives.

Twice upon a time — for that is how some stories should continue...

Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world.

But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard.

An old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey — to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres' childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father; to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting.

To the Land of Lost Things.

Is this just a terrifying dream, or a way for Ceres to recover her daughter? And what sacrifices will a mother make in order to be reunited with her child?

John Connolly is author of many novels, including the Charlie Parker mysteries and The Book of Lost Things. His debut – Every Dead Thing - introduced the character of Private Investigator Charlie Parker, and swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers. All his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers, and he has sold more than 8 million copies in English language alone. He was the winner of the 2016 CWA Short Story Dagger for ‘On the Anatomization of an Unknown Man (1637) by Frans Mier’ from Night Music: Nocturnes Vol 2. In 2007 he was awarded the Irish Post Award for Literature. He was the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus Award and the first Irish writer to win an Edgar Award.