It''s dangerous . . . and that''s the truth about love . . . A young man shields his terrible wounds from his mother; a husband believes he can love his grief-stricken wife back to life; a young girl puts her own life on hold until her family can find their way back from blinding pain; a man surrenders to the helplessness of obsessive love. Set in Ireland, this brilliant, intense story is about a family named O''Hara who chose to remain in the place of their loss, and the stranger from Germany who has run from his. It''s about love - for another, for a country, for family - and survival, and it''s remarkable.

''Sin might be the spearhead of a new fictional genre'' ANTHONY QUINN, INDEPENDENT

''The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination '' NEW YORK TIMES

''Shocking . . . unrelenting in its intensity . . . you won''t be able to put it down'' COSMOPOLITAN ''Though she wounded me beyond pain, I too inflicted deep hurt. Not born to murder her, still I sought to break her . . . Her name was Elizabeth Ashbridge. And I even envied her that.''

A provocative novel of jealousy and betrayal between two rival sisters Ruth calls herself a malevolent creature, ruled since childhood by hatred and envy for her adopted sister, Elizabeth. She grew up in Elizabeth''s shadow, always falling short of her goodness and generosity, constantly resenting her very presence in the family. As they grow old, Ruth sets out to destroy her without guilt or hesitation. Ruth will strike Elizabeth where she''s most vulnerable-she will steal her husband and send her collapsing into ruin.

Written in Hart''s concise, striking prose, Sin is a powerful and compulsively readable exploration of hate-and the destruction and tragedy it begets. It''s about a woman possessed by an obsessive envy, a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. From the author of the bestselling Damage, now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic.

Now filmed as Obsession on Netflix - starring Richard Armitage and Charlie Murphy

Josephine Hart, author of the bestselling novel Damage, had what she called ''a long love affair'' with poetry. It was an affair that started as a child and lasted until her untimely death at the age of sixty-nine in 2011. She said ''I was a word child'' growing up in Ireland ''a country of word children where life was language before it was anything else''. As a teenager and later she found the poetry of Eliot, Larkin, Yeats and others a lifeline,''a route map through life''.In the late 1980s, Hart, by now a successful West End theatre producer, began a hugely popular event in which actors read the words of the great poets to an enraptured audience. In 2004, The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour moved to the British Library, where it remains today. By her own admission, Josephine Hart gave ''dead poets society'' . But she also gave them intelligent and exciting introductions; all of which are now collected here in this volume. They are insightful, even great, works in their own right. Life Saving leaves us an inspiring legacy. It takes us on a journey of the imagination to some of the greatest poems written in the English language and allows us to understand, intuitively and deeply, why poetry matters.

It''s dangerous . . . and that''s the truth about love . . . A young man shields his terrible wounds from his mother; a husband believes he can love his grief-stricken wife back to life; a young girl puts her own life on hold until her family can find their way back from blinding pain; a man surrenders to the helplessness of obsessive love. Set in Ireland, this brilliant, intense story is about a family named O''Hara who chose to remain in the place of their loss, and the stranger from Germany who has run from his. It''s about love - for another, for a country, for family - and survival, and it''s remarkable.

''Sin might be the spearhead of a new fictional genre'' ANTHONY QUINN, INDEPENDENT

''The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination '' NEW YORK TIMES

''Shocking . . . unrelenting in its intensity . . . you won''t be able to put it down'' COSMOPOLITAN ''Though she wounded me beyond pain, I too inflicted deep hurt. Not born to murder her, still I sought to break her . . . Her name was Elizabeth Ashbridge. And I even envied her that.''

A provocative novel of jealousy and betrayal between two rival sisters Ruth calls herself a malevolent creature, ruled since childhood by hatred and envy for her adopted sister, Elizabeth. She grew up in Elizabeth''s shadow, always falling short of her goodness and generosity, constantly resenting her very presence in the family. As they grow old, Ruth sets out to destroy her without guilt or hesitation. Ruth will strike Elizabeth where she''s most vulnerable-she will steal her husband and send her collapsing into ruin.

Written in Hart''s concise, striking prose, Sin is a powerful and compulsively readable exploration of hate-and the destruction and tragedy it begets. It''s about a woman possessed by an obsessive envy, a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. From the author of the bestselling Damage, now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic.

Now filmed as Obsession on Netflix - starring Richard Armitage and Charlie Murphy

Josephine Hart, author of the bestselling novel Damage, had what she called ''a long love affair'' with poetry. It was an affair that started as a child and lasted until her untimely death at the age of sixty-nine in 2011. She said ''I was a word child'' growing up in Ireland ''a country of word children where life was language before it was anything else''. As a teenager and later she found the poetry of Eliot, Larkin, Yeats and others a lifeline,''a route map through life''.In the late 1980s, Hart, by now a successful West End theatre producer, began a hugely popular event in which actors read the words of the great poets to an enraptured audience. In 2004, The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour moved to the British Library, where it remains today. By her own admission, Josephine Hart gave ''dead poets society'' . But she also gave them intelligent and exciting introductions; all of which are now collected here in this volume. They are insightful, even great, works in their own right. Life Saving leaves us an inspiring legacy. It takes us on a journey of the imagination to some of the greatest poems written in the English language and allows us to understand, intuitively and deeply, why poetry matters.