Jo Baker – författare

The American debut of an enthralling new voice: a vivid, indelibly told work of fiction that follows four generations of a family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century—a novel about inheritance, about fate and passion, and about what it means to truly break free of the past.This is the story of the Hastings family—their secrets, their loves and losses, dreams and heartbreaks—captured in a seamless series of individual moments that span the years between the First World War and the present. The novel opens in 1914 as William, a young factory worker, spends one last evening at home before his departure for the navy . . . His son, Billy, grows into a champion cyclist and will ride into the D-Day landings on a military bicycle . . . His son in turn, Will, struggles with a debilitating handicap to become an Oxford professor in the 1960s . . . And finally, young Billie Hastings makes a life for herself as an artist in contemporary London. Just as the names echo down through the family, so too does the legacy of choices made, chances lost, and truths long buried.

This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

It is 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond watches from her attic window as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother, who never returned from France, she is trying to keep herself out of trouble: holding down a typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend, Elena, and dodging her overbearing father. On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds-a source of unexpected joy amid the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after yet another heartbreaking loss Charlotte has an uncanny sense of foreboding. Someone is stalking the darkness, targeting her friends. And now he's following her. As grief and suspicion consume her, Charlotte's nerves become increasingly frayed. She no longer knows whom to trust. She can't even trust herself . . . Utterly riveting and hypnotic, The Midnight News is a love story, a war story,and an unforgettable journey into the fragile mind and fierce heart of an extraordinary young woman.

''A tour de force'' IRISH TIMES''Riveting and moving'' NINA STIBBE''Gripping'' THE TIMES''It had me by the throat'' EMMA DONOGHUELONDON, 1940. As enemy planes fly over the city, twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond is trying to make the best of things. She has a dull but steady job at the Ministry of Information, a friend to share gin and secrets with, and an attic room of her own. All she has to do is keep her head down. She knows where her father will send her if she makes a nuisance of herself again.But amid the chaos of the Blitz, Charlotte''s grip on reality starts slipping. Is someone following her in the blackouts, or is her mind playing tricks on her? In a city where nothing is safe, it''s hard to know who to trust - until she meets the boy who feeds the birds . . .''A late-night page-turner that will keep you guessing till the end'' JOANNA QUINN''Glorious'' RED''Exquisite'' DAILY TELEGRAPH''I stayed up late reading and was glad'' SARAH MOSS

If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah thought, she would be more careful not to trudge through muddy fields.It is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House, and Sarah''s hands are chapped and bleeding. Domestic life below stairs, ruled tenderly and forcefully by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed by the arrival of a new footman smelling of the sea, and bearing secrets.For in Georgian England, there is a world the young ladies in the drawing room will never know, a world of poverty, love, and brutal war.