NOW A MAJOR BBC TV SERIES STARRING COLIN FARRELL, JACK O'CONNELL AND STEPHEN GRAHAM A ship sets sail with a killer on board . . . 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage. But when, deep into the journey, a cabin boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself forced to act. Soon he will face an evil even greater than he had encountered at the siege of Delhi, in the shape of Henry Drax: harpooner, murderer, monster . . . 'A tour de force' Hilary Mantel 'Riveting and darkly brilliant' Colm Toibin 'One of my favourite books ever' Richard Osman

NOW A MAJOR BBC TV SERIES STARRING COLIN FARRELL, JACK O'CONNELL AND STEPHEN GRAHAM A ship sets sail with a killer on board . . . 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage. But when, deep into the journey, a cabin boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself forced to act. Soon he will face an evil even greater than he had encountered at the siege of Delhi, in the shape of Henry Drax: harpooner, murderer, monster . . . 'A tour de force' Hilary Mantel 'Riveting and darkly brilliant' Colm Toibin 'One of my favourite books ever' Richard Osman

'Truly terrific' Richard Ford 'Dickens for the twenty-first century' Roddy Doyle 'A powerful, gripping tale' Sunday Times A man hanging on by a thread. A city about to snap. From the acclaimed author of The North Water comes an epic story of revenge and obsession. Manchester, 1867 Two men, haunted by their pasts. Driven by the need for justice. Blood begets blood. In a fight for life and legacy. Stephen Doyle arrives in Manchester from New York. He is an Irish-American veteran of the Civil War and a member of the Fenians, a secret society intent on ending British rule in Ireland, by any means necessary. Now he has come to seek vengeance. James O'Connor has fled grief and drink in Dublin for a sober start in Manchester as Head Constable. His mission is to discover and thwart the Fenians' plans. When his long-lost nephew arrives on his doorstep, he never could have foreseen how this would imperil his fragile new life - or how his and Doyle's fates would come to be intertwined. The rebels will be hanged at dawn, and their brotherhood is already plotting revenge. Praise for The North Water, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 'Brilliant, fast-paced, gripping. A tour de force of narrative tension and a masterful reconstruction of a lost world' Hilary Mantel 'Utterly convincing and compelling... A startling achievement' Martin Amis 'Riveting and darkly brilliant... McGuire has an extraordinary talent' Colm Toibin 'Has exceptional power and energy' Sunday Times 'A stunning novel that snares the reader from the outset and keeps the tightest grip until the bitter end' Financial Times 'A vivid read, full of twists, turns, period detail and strong characters' The Times 'Terrific - McGuire's use of the pitiless, fearsomely beautiful Arctic landscape as a theatre for enduring questions is inspired' Daily Mail 'McGuire has a sure and unwavering touch... a writer of exceptional craft and confidence' Irish Times

'Truly terrific' Richard Ford 'Dickens for the twenty-first century' Roddy Doyle 'A powerful, gripping tale' Sunday Times A man hanging on by a thread. A city about to snap. From the acclaimed author of The North Water comes an epic story of revenge and obsession. Manchester, 1867 Two men, haunted by their pasts. Driven by the need for justice. Blood begets blood. In a fight for life and legacy. Stephen Doyle arrives in Manchester from New York. He is an Irish-American veteran of the Civil War and a member of the Fenians, a secret society intent on ending British rule in Ireland, by any means necessary. Now he has come to seek vengeance. James O'Connor has fled grief and drink in Dublin for a sober start in Manchester as Head Constable. His mission is to discover and thwart the Fenians' plans. When his long-lost nephew arrives on his doorstep, he never could have foreseen how this would imperil his fragile new life - or how his and Doyle's fates would come to be intertwined. The rebels will be hanged at dawn, and their brotherhood is already plotting revenge. Praise for The North Water, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 'Brilliant, fast-paced, gripping. A tour de force of narrative tension and a masterful reconstruction of a lost world' Hilary Mantel 'Utterly convincing and compelling... A startling achievement' Martin Amis 'Riveting and darkly brilliant... McGuire has an extraordinary talent' Colm Toibin 'Has exceptional power and energy' Sunday Times 'A stunning novel that snares the reader from the outset and keeps the tightest grip until the bitter end' Financial Times 'A vivid read, full of twists, turns, period detail and strong characters' The Times 'Terrific - McGuire's use of the pitiless, fearsomely beautiful Arctic landscape as a theatre for enduring questions is inspired' Daily Mail 'McGuire has a sure and unwavering touch... a writer of exceptional craft and confidence' Irish Times

Richard Ford and the Ends of Realism examines the work of award-winning American novelist and short story writer Richard Ford, and places it firmly in the context of contemporary debates about the role and meaning of literary realism in a postmodern environment. In this fresh study of Ford's oeuvre, Ian McGuire argues that Ford's work is best understood as a form of pragmatic realism and thus positions him as part of a deeply rooted and ongoing American debate about the nature of realism and pragmatism. This debate, which reaches back to transcendentalist thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and continues on to today, questions the meaning of independence and the relationship between the self and history. In this context, McGuire explores Ford's deep engagement with American literary and philosophical traditions and repositions his work in its appropriate intellectual and literary context. McGuire also uses this idea of pragmatic realism to mount a larger defense of contemporary realist writing and uses Ford's example to argue that realism itself remains a useful and necessary critical category. Contemporary realism, rather than being merely conventional or reactionary, as some of its critics have called it, can offer its proponents an aesthetically and philosophically sophisticated way of engaging with and contesting the particularities of contemporary, even postmodern, experience. In offering this new reading of Richard Ford's fiction, as well as a fresh understanding of the realist impulse in contemporary American fiction, both become richer, more resonant, and more immediate-reaching both backward into the past and forward to involve themselves in important contemporary debates about history, postmodernity, and moral relativism.