The Impossible Thing
A joyful, captivating new mystery from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Snap
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From the Sunday Times bestselling and Booker-longlisted author of Snap, and winner of the CWA Crime Novel of the Year, comes 'An exciting contemporary whodunnit' (Times Literary Supplement)
*****’A unique crime novel that is both moving and funny . . . highly recommend’***** 5-STAR reader review
A summer’s evening in 1926, and six-year-old Celie Shepherd is hungry, desperate and dangling from a cliff, as she stretches out to steal something impossible. The bold theft will change Celie’s life, and the lives of many others.
One hundred years later, a remote home is ransacked by masked men. The only thing taken: a dusty box containing that same impossible thing. What could be so unique - and so valuable - that it is stolen again and again . . . and again?
So begins this extraordinary mystery from award-winning Belinda Bauer. The Impossible Thing brims with skulduggery at every turn, and is a blazing testament to Belinda Bauer’s status as one of our greatest living crime writers.
‘The most suspenseful whodunnit you’ll read this year’
LEE CHILD
‘A funny, moving and beautifully written tale’ Guardian
'Joyous . . . The most gripping yarn’ Daily Telegraph
'A brilliant rollercoaster of a crime novel' ROB COWEN
Readers are OBSESSED with The Impossible Thing!
‘Enthralling, hilarious, mysterious… I thoroughly enjoyed this book’ 5-STAR reader review
‘A perfect crime caper' Woman & Home
‘Pure joy’ VAL MCDERMID
‘Packs a real punch’ ANN CLEEVES
‘Astonishing’ New York Times
'Comic, thrilling and ultimately moving' The Scottish Mail on Sunday
‘I loved every page of this unique mystery.’ CLARE MACKINTOSH, bestselling author of I Let You GO
‘One of the most enjoyable novels I've read in ages’ PAULA HAWKINS, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bauer (Exit) tugs at the heartstrings in this extraordinary literary mystery that unfolds across intersecting timelines. In 1926, young Celie Sheppard retrieves a striking red egg from a guillemot's nest near her home in Yorkshire. With rare egg collecting booming in the region, Celie's discovery rescues her family from poverty—the egg's particular hue has never been seen before, and Celie finds it on a cliff near Metland Farm that's too treacherous for full-grown men to navigate. Her mother sells the egg to pay months of back rent, and enters into a contract to sell any other eggs that Celie finds. Eventually, the broker who buys Celie's egg is murdered. Bauer alternates that narrative thread with one set in the 21st century, in which a post about one of the so-called "Metland eggs" on eBay triggers a robbery that pits brothers Patrick and Nick Fort against an international crime ring. Bauer's deep empathy—for both her human characters and for the birds whose nests are looted—elevates the immersive and unpredictable plot. It's another winner from an impressively versatile writer.
