It is an early spring evening in 1943 when the air-raid sirens wail out over the East End of London. From every corner of Bethnal Green, people emerge from pubs, cinemas and houses and set off for the shelter of the tube station. But at the entrance steps, something goes badly wrong, the crowd panics, and 173 people are crushed to death. When an enquiry is called for, it falls to the local magistrate, Laurence Dunne, to find out what happened during those few, fatally confused minutes. But as Dunne gathers testimony from the guilt-stricken warden of the shelter, the priest struggling to bring comfort to his congregation, and the grieving mother who has lost her youngest daughter, the picture grows ever murkier. The more questions Dunne asks, the more difficult it becomes to disentangle truth from rumour - and to decide just how much truth the damaged community can actually bear. It is only decades later, when the case is reopened by one of the children who survived, that the facts can finally be brought to light ...

'Midway through my fortieth year, I reached a point where the balance of the past and all it contained seemed to outweigh the future, my mind so full of things said and not said, done and undone, I no longer understood how to move forward' May is at a crossroads. Although her career as a gardener for the university is flourishing, the rest of her life has narrowed to a parched routine. Her father is elderly, her brother estranged, and she keeps her neighbours at arm's length. The missing element, she realises, might be friendship. As May sets off on a journey to visit four neglected friends one-by-one, she holds herself (and them) to humorously high standards, while at home she begins to confront the pain of her past and imagine for herself a different kind of future. May's quest becomes an exploration of the power, and perhaps limits, of modern friendship.

"An elegant and deeply moving meditation on friendship, family, and life on earth. Rules for Visiting is a wonderful novel." -Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven The national bestseller and an Indie Next List pick Name a Best Book of the Year by O Magazine * Good Housekeeping * Real Simple * Vulture * Chicago Tribune Named a Best Book of the Summer by The Today Show * Good Morning America * Wall Street Journal * San Francisco Chronicle * Southern Living Shortlisted for the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize Long-listed for the 2020 Tournament of Books Dry, witty, and unapologetic, May Attaway loves literature and her work as a botanist for the university in her hometown. More at home with plants than people, May begins to suspect she isn't very good at friendship and wonders if it's possible to improve with practice. Granted some leave from her job, she sets out on a journey to spend time with four long-neglected friends. Smart, funny, and full of compassion, Rules for Visiting is the story of a search for friendship in the digital age, a singular look at the way we stay in touch. While May travels, she studies her friends' lives and begins to confront the pain of her own. With simplicity and honesty, Jessica Francis Kane has crafted an exquisite story about a woman trying to find a new way to be in the world. This nourishing book, with its beautiful contemplation of travel, trees, family, and friendship, is the perfect antidote to our chaotic times.

Gorgeous, melancholic stories of family relationships--and of trying to survive the modern world. "In her life, she'd rarely felt taller than the trees." So observes a character in Jessica Francis Kane's beautiful and insightful debut stories.Set in the United States and London, this striking collection introduces us to a range of complex characters: some anguished in their pursuit of impractical dreams, others struggling with the painful intimacy of families. We meet a mathematician who has forsaken everything in order to prove a theory, a young New York publicist trying to make ends meet, an older woman author achieving fame late in life. In each story, Kane combines elegant prose with wit, generosity, and emotional power to portray characters at odds with the pattern of their lives, often awkward or embarrassed or desperately impulsive. Much of what they understand about the people who would love them remains private, internal. In time, intimacy begins to look a lot like mere politeness among strangers. The problem, these stories suggest, is not misunderstanding but understanding too well.Bending Heaven marks the debut of a stunning new talent.