Clare Clark

Based on a true story, this gorgeous new novel follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in an art scandal--involving newly discovered van Goghs--that rocks Germany amidst the Nazis' rise to power. Hedonistic and politically turbulent, Berlin in the 1920s is a city of seedy night clubs and sumptuous art galleries. It is home to millionaires and mobs storming bakeries for rationed bread. These disparate Berlins collide when Emmeline, a young art student; Julius, an art expert; and a mysterious dealer named Rachmann all find themselves caught up in the astonishing discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh. In the Full Light of the Sun explores the trio's complex relationships and motivations, their hopes, their vanities, and their self-delusions--for the paintings are fakes and they are in their own ways complicit. Theirs is a cautionary tale about of the aspirations of the new Germany and a generation determined to put the humiliations of the past behind them. With her signature impeccable and evocative historical detail, Clare Clark has written a gripping novel about beauty and justice, and the truth that may be found when our most treasured beliefs are revealed as illusions.

In the Full Light of the Sun

Returning to his beloved wife from the battlefields of 1855 Crimea, engineer William May struggles to recover from his harrowing experiences by working on London's new sewer system, a job that is compromised by corruption, cholera outbreaks, and a murder accusation that strains his tenuous hold on sanity. A first novel. Reprint.

The Great Stink

The captivating story of two sisters born into privilege, forced to make their way in a world turned upside down by war, and the man who, against all expectation, transforms them both It is 1910. Jessica and Phyllis Melville have grown up at Ellinghurst, their family estate. A headstrong beauty, Jessica longs for London — the glitter and glamor of debutante life — while bookish Phyllis dreams in vain of attending the university. Neither girl questions that it is Theo, their adored brother, whom their mother loves best. Theo eclipses everyone around him, including diffident Oskar Grunewald — a prodigy in the rapidly evolving fields of math and physics — who with his mother is a frequent visitor to Ellinghurst. Fascinated by the house but alternately tormented and ignored by the Melville children, Oskar seeks refuge in Ellinghurst's enormous library.Over the next decade, as the Great War devastates and reshapes their world, the sisters come of age in a country unrecognizable from the idylls of their youth. As they struggle to forge new paths in a world that no longer plays by the old rules, Oskar's life becomes entwined with theirs once again, in ways that will change all of their futures forever.

We That Are Left

Savage lands

In 1718, sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally, takes a job in London as an apothecary's maid, only to find herself working for a mysterious apothecary who refuses to let her see his face or enter the study where he pursues his experiments.

The Nature of Monsters

The nature of monsters

Beautiful Lies

Trespass

Returning home from the battlefields of 1855 Crimea, William May struggles to recover from his experiences by working on London's new sewer system, a job that is compromised by a murder accusation that strains his tenuous hold on sanity.

It is 1704 and, while the Sun King Louis XIV rules France from the splendour of Versailles, Louisiana, the new and vast colony named in his honour, is home to fewer than two hundred souls. When a demand is sent requesting wives be dispatched for the struggling settlers, Elisabeth is among the twenty-three girls who set sail from France to be married to men of whom they know absolutely nothing. Educated and skeptical, Elisabeth has little hope for happiness in her new life. It is to her astonishment that she, alone among the brides, finds herself passionately in love with her new husband, Jean-Claude, a charismatic and ruthlessly ambitious soldier. Auguste, a poor cabin boy from Rochefort, must also adjust to a startlingly unexpected future. Abandoned in a remote native village, he is charged by the colony's governor with mastering the tribe's strange language while reporting back on their activities. It is there that he is befriended by Elisabeth's husband as he begins the slow process of assimilation back into life among the French. The love Elisabeth and Auguste share for Jean-Claude changes both of their lives irrevocably. When in time he betrays them both, they find themselves bound together in ways they never anticipated. With the same compelling prose and vividly realized characters that won her widespread acclaim for THE GREAT STINK and THE NATURE OF MONSTERS, Clare Clark takes us deep into the heart of colonial French Louisiana.

Savage Lands

It is 1887, and an unsettled London prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Maribel, beautiful bohemian wife of maverick political Edward Campbell Lowe and self-proclaimed Chilean heiress educated in Paris, debates how to make her own mark on the world, while experimenting with the new art of photography. However, the wife of an outspoken member of parliament, whose views inspire enmity and admiration in equal measure, should not be hiding the kind of secrets Maribel has buried in her past. When a notorious newspaper editor beings to take an uncommon interest in her, Maribel fears he will destroy not only Edward's career but both of their reputations.

A tale inspired by a true story follows the experiences of Scottish aristocrat's wife Maribel Campbell, a self-proclaimed Chilean heiress who in late Victorian London finds her husband's career threatened by a notorious journalist's investigation into her true past.

The author of In the Full Light of the Sun “treats the founding of French Louisiana with her signature dark realism and beautiful handling of character” (Library Journal). Praised by Hilary Mantel, Amanda Foreman, and the New York Times Book Review for her “verve and intelligence . . . [and] the originality of her imagination,” Clare Clark has become a rising star in historical fiction. Elisabeth is among twenty-three girls who set sail from France for the new colony of Louisiana to be married to strangers. Although she has little hope for happiness in her new life, she finds herself passionately in love with her new husband, Jean-Claude, a charismatic and ruthlessly ambitious soldier. But betrayal is as much a part of the new world as the old, and when Elisabeth finds herself deceived by her husband she also finds herself bound to a poor cabin boy in a way she never anticipated. Clark creates a world that is both incredibly real and incredibly dazzling. And with the same compelling prose and vividly realized characters that won her widespread acclaim for The Great Stink and The Nature of Monsters, she takes us deep into the heart of colonial French Louisiana. “It is well told and well paced, with an easy narrative flow. The story offers strong personalities and a complicated, interesting plot, stretching over a couple of decades, set in an unfamiliar, truly exotic place and era.” —The Guardian “Clark’s vast store of historical and geographical detail enriches the portraits of her three vibrant characters, whose destinies are inextricably, and memorably, bound.” —Booklist

Clare Clark

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