The Trees - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408862255 ISBN 13: 9781408862254

Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus

Synopsis

There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins... There is no warning. No chance to prepare. They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed. Broken bodies, still wrapped in tattered bed linen, hang among the twitching leaves. Adrien Thomas has never been much of a hero. But when he realises that no help is coming, he ventures out into this unrecognisable world. Michelle, his wife, is across the sea in Ireland and he has no way of knowing whether the trees have come for her too. Then Adrien meets green-fingered Hannah and her teenage son Seb. Together, they set out to find Hannah's forester brother, to reunite Adrien with his wife - and to discover just how deep the forest goes. Their journey will take them to a place of terrible beauty and violence, to the dark heart of nature and the darkness inside themselves.

About this title

About the Author

Ali Shaw is the award-winning author of The Girl with Glass Feet and The Man who Rained. He grew up in Dorset and graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in English Literature. He has since worked as a bookseller and at the Bodleian Library. He now lives in Oxford, with his wife and baby daughter. alishaw.co.uk @Ali_Shaw

Review

"Fantastically imagined . . . Shaw's most delightful offerings are the vivid details he provides to make the magical real . . . The end of the book, saturated with color and emotion, is risky and brave like the message it imparts. Only a heart of glass would be unmoved." - The New York Times Book Review on THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET

"A rare orchid of a book, beautiful and eccentric and exquisitely sad." - Patrick Ness on THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET

"Delicately crafted, just like its predecessor, its story haunting and thoroughly, charmingly different." - Sunday Times on THE MAN WHO RAINED

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus
• ISBN 10: 1408862255
• ISBN 13: 9781408862254
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1