Bitter Honey

From three times winner of Wales Book of the Year
''A gentle and tender novel about the power of forgiveness and how humans might thrive when given the space to grow. Richly rewarding fiction.'' Kirsty Capes, author of Careless and Girls
'A seed in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible' Old Welsh Proverb
Hannah has lived at Berllan Deg all her life, her husband came to live at the orchard when they got married. Tonight, she prepares for his funeral as he lies in the parlour. Over fifty years of marriage, a lifetime of memories dissipating in the impossibility of his stillness. He was a writer and a beekeeper who came to understand the world through the language of bees. He has left her eleven letters; the exact same number as there are frames in a bee's nest. Each letter is an examination of an aspect of their marriage. The morning of the funeral, Sadie, Hannah's estranged little sister comes back home for the service. As the letters unfold, they reveal a devastating secret that will make Hannah have to re-evaluate her whole life.
Bitter Honey is a novel which brings three very different women together into a broken Eden and examines how they rebuild it on their own terms.

Caryl Lewis is a multi-award-winning Welsh novelist, children's writer, playwright and screenwriter. Her breakthrough novel Martha, Jac a Sianco is widely regarded as a modern classic of Welsh literature, and sits on the Welsh curriculum. The film adaptation - with a screenplay by Caryl herself - won six Welsh BAFTAS. Her other screenwriting work includes BBC/S4C thrillers Hinterland and Hidden. In 2023, she won the Wales Book of the Year Award for the third time for her debut English novel Drift, making her the first writer ever to have won in both languages. She is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and lives with her family on a farm near Aberystwyth.