Melissa Harrison

A _Financial Times_ and _Observer_ Book to Look Out For in 2026_April brings spring surging with it, giving rise, among many in the village, to a comforting illusion that all is somehow still right with the world, and that nothing will ever change_In the ancient Welm Valley, something is shifting: the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease.A woman falls while out walking and hopes to be found before nightfall; a doctor realises, too late, that he has long underestimated his wife; across the village, people are plagued by the same vast and unsettling dream.

And alone in a converted priory, overlooking watermeadows unchanged for centuries, Clare Grey receives news which will force her to reconsider her family's past and the fresh weight of her solitary existence.AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Melissa Harrison is a novelist, nature writer, podcaster and children's author.

Her 2018 novel _All Among the Barley_ was the UK winner of the European Prize for Literature.

Her work has been shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and the Wainwright Prize and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

She lives in Suffolk.