The Second Sleep
From the bestselling author of Conclave
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3.5 • 324 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
**PRE-ORDER AGRIPPA NOW: THE THRILLING NEW NOVEL FROM ROBERT HARRIS, COMING AUGUST 2026**
WHAT IF YOUR FUTURE LIES IN THE PAST?
'Wonderful, compulsive reading. Buy it tomorrow. Tonight if possible.' STEPHEN KING'
'A thoroughly absorbing, page-turning narrative.' SUNDAY TIMES
'Genuinely thrilling.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
Dusk is gathering as a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, rides across a silent land.
He must arrive at a remote village in the wilds of Exmoor before night falls. He's lost and he's becoming anxious as he slowly picks his way across a countryside strewn with the ancient artefacts of a civilisation that seems to have ended in cataclysm.
What Fairfax cannot know is that, in the days and weeks to come, everything he believes in will be tested as he uncovers a secret that is as dangerous as it is terrifying . . .
'[Harris] takes us on a thrilling ride while serving up serious food for thought.' SUNDAY EXPRESS
'A truly surprising future-history thriller. Fabulous, really.' EVENING STANDARD
'The book's real power lies in its between-the-lines warning that our embrace of the internet represents some kind of sleepwalk into oblivion. It's a provocative, tub-thumping sci-fi of which H. G. Wells might have been proud.' DAILY MAIL
'Harris' latest work intelligently warps historical fiction and tackles issues of religion, science and the apocalypse in the process. As he flexes his imagination, you will be left pondering as often as you are page-turning.' HERALD
'A brilliantly imaginative thriller' READER'S DIGEST
Robert Harris, Sunday Times bestselling author, May 2024
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thriller Award winner Harris (Munich) does a masterly job playing with readers' expectations in this mystery set in 15th-century England. Fr. Christopher Fairfax has been dispatched by his bishop to Wessex to officiate at the funeral of Fr. Thomas Lacy, a parish priest who died in a fall. The assignment seems routine enough, but on reaching the town of Addicott St. George, he finds unexpected questions to answer. When he visits Lacy's library, he learns that the man he's about to inter in consecrated ground possessed numerous heretical volumes relating to an antiquarian society proscribed by the church. Eager to keep things uncomplicated, Fairfax proceeds with the funeral service as if he'd never seen the books, only to have the rites disrupted by an attendee who yells that Lacy's death was not the result of "evil chance." When foul weather delays Fairfax's departure, he finds even more oddities, including the disappearance of the church register and an unsettling letter by a Cambridge professor found in a mass grave, which supports his suspicion that Lacy's interest in the past was more than innocent scholarly curiosity. Few readers will pick up on the fairly planted clues. This is a clever complement to Harris's debut mystery, Fatherland. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Customer Reviews
Post apocalyptic archaeology
This is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.
Slow and inconclusive
Harris is usually slow but purposeful, leading to a sometimes surprising conclusion. This is just slow…and ultimately very unsatisfying. Not his best…
Rare misfire
His historical fiction books are usually enthralling but this was a real stinker.