The Restoration is over and Robert Merivel, renowned physician and courtier to Charles II, now faces the anxieties of middle age. Questions crowd his mind: Has he been a good father? Is he a fair master? Is he the king’s friend or the king’s slave? In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles leaves him in despair, until a chance encounter with a seductive Swiss botanist allows him to dream of an honorable future. But back home, his loyalty and medical skill are about to be tested to the limit, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause havoc …

With a cascade of lace at his neck and a laugh that can burst out of him in the midst of torment, Merivel is soulful, outrageous, and achingly sad. His unmistakable, self-mocking voice speaks directly to us down the centuries. Get ready to laugh, prepare to weep–Robert Merivel is back in Rose Tremain’s magical sequel to Restoration.

Restoration is a panoramic novel of life in 17th-century England, from the restoration of vitality to the empire after the onslaughts of the London fire and the plague, to the restoration of purpose and wakefulness in the life of Robert Merivel, who places his faith in the greatest symbol of a forward-moving era-the King.

From Rose Tremain comes the Booker Prize short-listed novel that “restored the historical novel to its rightful place of honor” (New York Times).

Robert Merivel, son of a glove maker and an aspiring physician, finds his fortunes transformed when he is given a position at the court of King Charles II. Merivel slips easily into a life of luxury and idleness, enthusiastically enjoying the women and wine of the vibrant Restoration age. But when he’s called on to serve the king in an unusual role, he transgresses the one law he is forbidden to break and is brutally cast out from his newfound paradise. Thus begins Merivel’s journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society.

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem only a distant echo. An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist. Moving backward to the war years and the painful repercussions of an act of conscience, and forward through the lives and careers of two men, The Gustav Sonata explores the passionate love of childhood friendship as it is lost, transformed, and regained over a lifetime. Moving between the 1930s and the 1990s, this fierce and beautifully orchestrated novel explores the vast human issues of racism and tolerance, flight and refuge, cruelty and tenderness. It is a powerful and deeply moving addition to the beloved oeuvre of one of our greatest contemporary novelists.

An electrifying novel about disputed territory, sibling love, and devastating revenge. In a silent valley in southern France stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas Lunel. Aramon, the owner, is so haunted by his violent past that he’s become incapable of all meaningful action, letting his hunting dogs starve and his land go to ruin. Meanwhile, his sister Audrun, alone in her modern bungalow within sight of the Mas Lunel, dreams of exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life. Into this closed world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques dealer from London. When he sets his sights on the Mas, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences is set in motion.