Mapping the Edge by Sarah Dunant

SARAH DUNANT has written eight novels and edited two books of essays. She has worked widely in print, television, and radio, and until recently hosted the leading BBC Radio arts program, Night Waves. Now a full-time writer, she is adapting her novels Transgressions and Mapping the Edge for the screen. Dunant has two children and lives in London and Florence.

Sarah Dunant

Mapping the Edge

JACKET NOTES: "People go missing every day. They walk out of their front doors and out of their lives into the silence of cold statistics. For those left behind it is the cruelest of long good-byes."
Anna, a self-sufficient and reliable single mother, packs her bags one day for a short vacation to Italy. She leaves her beloved six- year-old daughter, Lily, at home in London with good friends. But when Anna doesn't return, everyone begins to make excuses until the likelihood that she might not come back becomes chillingly clear. And the people who thought they knew Anna best realize they don't know her at all. How could she leave her daughter? Why doesn't she call? Is she enjoying a romantic tryst with a secret lover? Or has she been abducted or even killed by a disturbed stranger?
"Did that person you loved so much-and thought you knew so well-did they simply choose to go and not come back? Or did someone do the choosing for them?"
Dunant, a masterly British suspense writer, skillfully interweaves parallel narratives that are stretched taut with tension even as they raise difficult questions about motherhood, friendship, and accountability. In this compelling hybrid of sophisticated crime writing and modern women's fiction, Dunant challenges and unnerves us as she redefines the boundaries of the psychological thriller.
"Missing rubs the soul raw. In place of answers all you have is your imagination."
(© Random House)

MORE JACKET NOTES: When someone you love goes missing, all you’ve got left is your imagination...
Anna packs her bags one day without telling anyone where or why she is going, only that she’ll be back soon. She leaves behind her beloved daughter, her friends, her house, her job, but she leaves no clue to her destination or what (or who) caused her to go.
Veering from hoping the best to fearing the worst, her friends can only report her missing and wait. Meanwhile Anna continues on two journeys, on an explosive sexual adventure, the other as the victim of a stranger’s bizarre and dangerous fantasy, and no-one can be sure she will ever make it home...
(©Warner Books)

Sarah Dunant's Historical Fiction Novel
Set in Renassiance Florence
The Birth of Venus