Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2019.

Tobi and Ella's childhood in East Berlin is shrouded in mystery. Now adults living in London, their past is full of unanswered questions. Both remember their family's daring and terrifying attempt to escape, which ended in tragedy; but the fall-out from that single event remains elusive. Where did their parents disappear to, and why?

What happened to Heiko, their little brother? And was there ever a painting of three blue horses?

In contemporary Germany, Aaron works for the archive, making his way through old files, piecing together the tragic history of thousands of families. But one file in particular catches his eye; and soon unravelling the secrets at its heart becomes an obsession.

When Ella is left a stash of notebooks by her mother, and she and Tobi embark on a search that will take them back to Berlin, her fate clashes with Aaron's, and together they piece together the details of Ella's past... and a family destroyed.

Devastating and beautifully written, funny and life-affirming, Confession with Blue Horses explores intimate family life and its strength in the most difficult of circumstances.

London, 1939 As war breaks out in Europe, two families face their own conflicts. Two Quaker brothers, Paul and Charlie Lamb, sign a pledge of peace. Jewish crystallographer Mrs Morningstar sleeps restlessly, unable to bear the guilt of her work. And her daughter, Miriam, comes home with her stockings inside out but can't confess where she has been. By the end of the war, they will each have to make impossible choices. Lines will be crossed, secrets will out, and lives will be lost. 'Poignant without ever being sentimental, morally complex and deftly woven - this is a book that gets better and better with every chapter' Gavin Extence 'Tender and absorbing. An intriguing glimpse into the pacifist's world' Esther Freud

The compelling and original debut novel from the Costa Prize-shortlisted author of Confession with Blue Horses.

Swimming for his life towards traffickers on the Italian shore, Selim enters a world where Kurdish refugees disguise themselves as tomatoes, dates of birth are a matter of opinion, and a residency permit is a ticket to paradise. When he ends up in a small town in Germany, Selim believes he is finally safe, until the law catches up with him and the clock starts ticking. Selim realises there is only one way to avoid deportation, if he dare try...

Fifteen years later, in a town hall in Paris, a Registrar receives an unsettling book in the post. The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages only fuels her suspicions surrounding an impending Kurdish wedding. Unsure how to intervene, she embarks on an investigation that brings her uncomfortably close to an old acquaintance: Selim.

Written with real imaginative flair, heart and humour, The Registrar's Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages introduces an unlikely hero who'll prove impossible to forget, and a prodigious new talent in Sophie Hardach.

A celebration of the huge linguistic diversity that is open to all of us at birth, and that has inspired and fascinated humans since the invention of speech This book opens with the first sounds a child hears in their mother's womb and their capacity for quickly learning more than one language. Hardach explores how this capacity has always been a necessary and normal aspect of human behaviour, from the earliest evidence of writing in different languages on Mesopotamian clay tablets to the role of trade in transmitting words across cultures and continents through families of multilingual merchants. She takes us into the 'book cemeteries' of medieval synagogues; describes the riddles of hieroglyphics and cuneiform, and the long struggle to decipher them; discovers the enigmatic lost language of Cypro-Minoan Britain; and reminds us, in an era of resurgent nationalism, that in the British Isles many languages have mingled in fruitful and fascinating ways. This is a book about languages and the people who love them. It is about the strange and wonderful ways in which humans have used languages since the days of the earliest clay records. About the linguistic threads that connect us all. Above all, it is about pleasure.