The Riders

Fred Scully has decided to leave Australia to carve a new life for himself and his young family in Ireland. He labours alone to make their dilapidated cottage habitable, but when he arrives at the airport to pick up his wife and child, only his small daughter steps off the plane. So begins Scully's desperate odyssey across Europe, trying to track down the wife he comes to realize he didn't know. 'A brilliant reflection on the instability of personality and memory, written in page-turning style' Daily Telegraph 'An intricate, magnificently readable novel' Sunday Telegraph 'Makes the senses jump. Concentrated, passionate, invigorating' Independent

After traveling through Europe for two years, Scully and his wife Jennifer wind up in Ireland, and on a mystical whim of Jennifer's, buy an old farmhouse which stands in the shadow of a castle. While Scully spends weeks alone renovating the old house, Jennifer returns to Australia to liquidate their assets. When Scully arrives at Shannon Airport to pick up Jennifer and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, it is Billie who emerges -- alone. There is no note, no explanation, not so much as a word from Jennifer, and the shock has left Billie speechless. In that instant, Scully's life falls to pieces.

The Riders is a superbly written and a darkly haunting story of a lovesick man in a vain search for a vanished woman. It is a powerfully accurate account of marriage today, of the demons that trouble relationships, of resurrection found in the will to keep going, in the refusal to hold on, to stand still. The Riders is also a moving story about the relationship between a loving man and his tough, bright daughter.