FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

‘Bittersweet … dazzling’ The Guardian

‘Deeply pleasurable … the ending made me cry’ The Times

‘Told with a wealth of detail and narrative intensity’ Penelope Lively

Violet is 39.

She lost her fiancé in the Great War.

She is considered a ‘surplus woman’.

But Violet is also fiercely independent, intelligent and determined. Escaping her suffocating mother, she moves to Winchester to start a new life – an endeavour which will require courage, resilience and a series of quiet rebellions…