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  • Published: 4 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241991169
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

The Gardener





A charming new novel about two very different sisters who buy a ramshackle cottage together, from the bestselling author of The Librarian

'Two sisters, Hassie and Margot Days, after heated exchanges and months of debate, had put together the money left them by their father and bought a house in Hope Wenlock, just on the English side of the Welsh Borders. The house was timbered, roomy and, certainly on the outside, picturesque; "a jigsaw picture house", it was described by the agents (a description which had for some time set Hassie against going to view it). What she had seen, when Margot's persistence eroded her resistance, was a rambling redbrick building, covered in Virginia creeper, with a sprawling garden, invaded by weeds, yellow fungi, and clumps of brooding nettles. . .'

When the sisters hire Murat, who has recently arrived in Hope Wenlock from Albania, to be their gardener, they unwittingly unleash tensions in the quiet English village they have begun to call home. The Gardener is a beautifully observed tale of sisterhood, secrets, belonging and new beginnings, from the best-selling author of The Librarian.

  • Published: 4 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241991169
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

About the author

Salley Vickers

Salley Vickers is the author of the word-of-mouth bestseller Miss Garnet's Angel and seven other bestselling novels, including Mr Golightly's Holiday, The Other Side of You and her latest acclaimed novel, The Cleaner of Chartres. Her first collections of short stories, Aphrodite's Hat, attracted wide praise and she now returns with a second collection, The Boy Who Could See Death. Salley Vickers is a former university teacher of literature and psychoanalyst and now writes and lectures full-time. She lives in London and Oxford.

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Praise for The Gardener

The Gardener is a novel of regrowth & regeneration, of sisters overcoming a toxic parental legacy & of the healing power of seed packets. The perfect fictional promise to draw us through a harsh winter

Patrick Gale

Heart-warming, beautifully written and moving

The Times on 'Grandmothers'

No one can dig down into the shrouded recesses of the human heart quite as forensically as Vickers

Sunday Times

Salley Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand. She's a presence worth cherishing

Philip Pullman

Vickers writes of relationships with undaunted clarity

Adam Phillips
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