The Bone Clocks

By David Mitchell

Subjects: Mystics, Science Fiction, Imaginary wars and battles, Fiction, fantasy, contemporary, FICTION / Fantasy / General, General, Large type books, FICTION / Literary, New York Times bestseller, Fantasy fiction, Fantasy, Conspiracies, Secret societies, Literary, FICTION / Science Fiction / General, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, satire, Fiction, Iraq War, 2003-2011, Mortality, Coincidence, Fiction, science fiction, general, nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2014-09-21, Cults

Description: Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics -- and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly's life, affecting all the people Holly loves -- even the ones who are not yet born. A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list -- all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.