Instructions for a Heatwave

The Sunday Times top 10 bestselling summer read from author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT *Over 380,000 copies sold* Shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award
'Addictive. Told with real humanity, warmth, and infectious love' Observer
_____ It's July 1976 and London is in the grip of a heatwave. It hasn't rained for months, the gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce - back home, each with different ideas as to where their father may have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.
_____ 'Superlative. A Mike Leigh-style extravaganza of reckonings and reconciliations' Vogue
'O'Farrell is hard to beat' Scotsman
'There is a deliciousness to this novel, a warmth and readability, that render it unputdownable' Guardian

Maggie O'Farrell is the author of HAMNET, Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I AM, I AM, I AM, both Sunday Times no. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include AFTER YOU'D GONE, MY LOVER'S LOVER, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize. She is also the author of three books for children, WHERE SNOW ANGELS GO, THE BOY WHO LOST HIS SPARK and WHEN THE STAMMER CAME TO STAY. She lives in Edinburgh.