Instructions for a Heatwave

Paperback edition of the stunning new novel from the Costa Novel award-winning author of "After You'd Gone" and "The Distance Between Us". Set in the 1976 heatwave, it follows the meltdown of a London Irish family, as the father disappears and his disparate grown-up children return to the fold to try and find him. Richly comic and painfully well-observed. 'O'Farrell has a remarkable ability to convey the texture of human emotion with precision' "Observer"

Maggie O'Farrell is the author of HAMNET, Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I AM, I AM, I AM, both Sunday Times no. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include AFTER YOU'D GONE, MY LOVER'S LOVER, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize. She is also the author of two books for children, WHERE SNOW ANGELS GO and THE BOY WHO LOST HIS SPARK. She lives in Edinburgh.