THE SACRED COMBE

In this mesmerising English debut novel, a man escapes his former life to enter an enchanted place, something like The Secret Garden for grown-ups.

Samuel Browne's wife has left him after just three bright years of marriage. She invites him to ‘go live a better life without me'. He must start again, and alone. And so it is that Sam finds himself deep in the English countryside in a cold but characterful old house, remote and encircled by hills, in the employment and company of an older, wiser man, a man as fond of mystery as he is of enlightenment. Who wrote the letter that Sam is charged with locating in the house's ancient library? What is the secret of the unused room? And where does a life lose its way or gain its meaning?

In THE SACRED COMBE, there is truth born of fraud, a building made of light, and a family wrecked by recklessness: loss and love reverberate around the house and around the novel, providing pleasure, pain, and purpose. Combe Hall is a house designed to honour and to enthrall. And this very ?ne debut novel does exactly the same.

Thomas Maloney was born in Kent in 1979, grew up in south-east London and studied physics at university. He is a competent but unexceptional mountaineer and astigmatic birdwatcher, and lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, daughter and kayak.