The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd

Few had heard of Tambora - but none could escape its effects. Six separate lives, connected only by an event many thousands of miles away. The Year Without Summer is the story of the books written, the art made of the journeys taken, of the love longed for and the lives lost during that fateful year. As desperation sets in, Britain becomes beset by riots - rebellion is in the air. He flees to London, where he falls in with a group of revolutionaries who speak of a better life, whatever the cost. And Hope Peter, returned from the Napoleonic wars, finds his family home demolished and a fence gone up in its place. In the Fens, farm labourer Sarah Hobbs has had enough of going hungry while the farmers flaunt their wealth. In Suffolk, the ambitious and lovesick painter John Constable struggles to reconcile the idyllic England he paints with the misery that surrounds him. In Vermont, preacher Charles Whitlock begs his followers to keep faith as drought dries their wells and their livestock starve.

Confined inside by the unseasonable weather, thousands of famine refugees stream past her door. 1816 In Switzerland, Mary Shelley finds dark inspiration. But worse is yet to come: as the ash cloud rises and covers the sun, the seasons will fail. Once a paradise, the island is now solid ash, the surrounding sea turned to stone. Sent to investigate, ship surgeon Henry Hogg can barely believe his eyes.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT HISTORICAL FICTION PRIZE 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA GOLD CROWN AWARD 2020 'A STRIKINGLY SHARP AND SUBTLE WRITER' Guardian 'SUPERB.BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN.UNFORGETTABLE' FT Weekend 'SKILFUL' Sunday Times 'RICH, INTRICATE, IMPRESSIVELY REALISED' Observer 'VIVIDLY REALISED' The Times 'A VISION OF THE PAST AND A VISION OF THE FUTURE' Irish Times 'A VIVID SLICE OF HISTORICAL FICTION' Sunday Express 1815, Sumbawa Island, Indonesia Mount Tambora explodes in a cataclysmic eruption, killing thousands.

The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd