The Winter Guest

A short novel to gulp down in one sitting, The Winter Guest, from Sunday Times bestselling author, Sarah Moss, is an enthralling story about how the past will always come to find you in the end. 'Deliciously twisty. Destined to be one of those Christmas Eve classics' - Rachel Joyce 'Pure pleasure from start to finish' - Katherine Rundell Tell me the worst thing you've ever done. On Christmas Eve, in a hotel on Ireland's west coast, a man and a woman meet for the first time. As a snowstorm gathers outside windows twinkling with fairy lights, they share a meal, pour wine, propose a toast. Janice and Gerry may be strangers to one another, but they each have a confession to make. As the blizzard howls, the night will take an unexpected turn, and their conversation will have consequences far beyond the candlelit table . . . 'A perfectly measured serving of expert storytelling with a deliciously dark twist. I inhaled it in a single sitting. This is classic Sarah Moss' - Jan Carson, author of Few and Far Between Readers love The Winter Guest: 'Powerful, provocative and a classic in the making. One of my best reads of 2026' * 'The Winter Guest then is a perfect novel for a cold winters evening, preferably beside a warm fire' * 'Sarah Moss has crafted a perfect tale spun out beside a hotel fireside in the snow-swept darkness of an Irish Christmas' * 'This short novella by Sarah Moss was a delectable feast' * 'The writing is beautiful and will transport you to a stormy winters night' *

Sarah Moss is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin's School of English, Drama and Film in the Republic of Ireland. She has published six novels as well as a number of non-fiction works. Her work has been nominated three times for the Wellcome Book Prize., Sarah Moss is the author of several novels and a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her novels are Summerwater, Cold Earth, Night Waking, Bodies of Light (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), Signs for Lost Children (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize), The Tidal Zone (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and Ghost Wall, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019. Sarah was born in Glasgow and grew up in the north of England. After moving between Oxford, Canterbury, Reykjavik and West Cornwall, she now lives in the Midlands and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick.