The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Maggie O'Farrell is a consistent Sunday Times bestseller in both hardback and paperback. Her novels are word of mouth phenomena: AFTER YOU'D GONE has now sold 300,000 copies, and there are three quarters of a million Maggie O'Farrell novels in print.

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A significant departure for Maggie O'Farrell in terms of maturity and style, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX will be one of the unmissable publishing events of 2006. Set between the 1930s,and the present, Maggie O'Farrell's new novel is the story of Esme, a woman edited out of her family's history, and of the secrets that come to light when, sixty years later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had. The mystery that unfolds is the heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and 1930s Edinburgh - of the loneliness that binds them together and the rivalries that drive them apart, and lead one of them to a shocking betrayal - but above all it is the story of Esme, a fiercely intelligent, unconventional young woman, and of the terrible price she is made to pay for her family's unhappiness.