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The Year of Fog
The Year of Fog
Sep 1, 2025 7:02 PM

Author:Michelle Richmond

The Year of Fog

Life changes in an instant. On a foggy beach in San Francisco, Abby Mason - photographer, fiancée, soon-to-be-stepmother - looks away from six-year-old Emma for an instant. By the time she looks back, Emma has disappeared.

Devastated by guilt, haunted by her fears about becoming a mother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. Now, as the days drag into weeks, as the police lose interest and fliers fade on telephone poles, Emma's father finds solace in religion. But Abby can only wander the beaches and city streets, attempting to recover the past and the little girl she lost.

Reviews

In just two novels (No One You Know was the first), Michelle Richmond has established herself as mistress of the kind of literary mystery which packs the punch of a fine thriller but with added insight and wisdom...Mesmerising and harrowing, this is not just a story about a missing child but about faith, the function of memory and the way life can completely turn around in an instant.

—— Daily Mail

Heartbreaking and riveting...beautifully written

—— Closer

impossible to put down...Five Stars

—— News of the World

A gripping tale of a woman's search for her fiancé's missing daughter

—— People Magazine

A breathtaking novel...magnetic.

—— Elle France

What a wonderful novel! The lush prose kept me turning pages as surely as the compelling plot did. Suspenseful, richly imagined, and ultimately hopeful, The Year of Fog is a keeper. Michelle Richmond is a talent to watch.

—— Joshilyn Jackson, author of GODS IN ALABAMA

In this spare page-turner, Richmond draws complex tensions from a the set setup of a child gone missing...Wholly effective...beautifully paced

—— Publishers Weekly

As Clare Clark's third novel so lushly illustrates, Louisiana has never been the safest place to live... this eye-opening account of Louisiana's early history conjures up a nicely gothic landscape

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

'Splendid news...Captain Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons and ADC to the Duke of Wellington is back in the saddle...A marvellous read, paced like a well-balanced symphony. This is more than a ripping yarn...I look forward enormously to hearing more of Hervey's exploits; he is as fascinating on horseback as Jack Aubrey is on the quarterdeck'

—— The Times

A book of great maturity, beautifully alive to the fragility of happiness and all forms of violence... Everyone should read Saturday

—— Financial Times

The supreme novelist of his generation

—— Sunday Times

Dazzling... Profound and urgent

—— Observer

A brilliant novel.It is McEwan writing on absolute top form

—— Daily Mail

Refreshing and engrossing, dense with revelation. Superb

—— Independent on Sunday

A rich book, sensuous and thoughtful... McEwan has found in Saturday the right form to showcase his dazzling talents

—— The Times

McEwan is word-perfect at handling the awkward comedy of this relationship and, as ever, turning it into something far more disturbing

—— Observer

Two characters so vibrant they step straight off the page

—— Yvonne Cassidy , The Tablet

McEwan's brilliance as a novelist lies in his ability to isolate discrete moments in life and invest them with incredible significance

—— Tim Adams , Observer

McEwan's style is lean and clear...every sentence feels carefully crafted, the words all perfectly in place

—— John Harding , Daily Mail

A tightly focused human drama... McEwan gives the reader access to both characters' thoughts with his usual skill, and the comedy of embarrassment, or of the kind of erotic misunderstanding that Milan Kundera used to specialise in, quickly disappears as the marital bed begins to seem more and more ominous... The bedroom scene itself is carried off brilliantly

—— Christopher Taylor , Sunday Telegraph

A fine book, homing in with devastating precision on a kind of Englishness which McEwan understands better than any other living writer, the Englishness of deceit, evasion, repression and regret. In On Chesil Beach McEwan has combined the intensity of his narrowly focused early work with his more expansive later flowered to devastating effect

—— Justin Cartwright , Independent on Sunday

McEwan is the kind of author who can say more in a sentence than most can say in a chapter...This is a thoughtful book which provokes thought. But more immediately than that, this is a book which, while managing to be very funny, gives us a wonderful and moving portrait of a specific time, and two of its hostages, and of how to make a mess of love

—— Keith Ridgeway , Irish Times

McEwan conveys the near-numinous significance of a single moment with quiet, almost unbearable grace

—— Metro

A heavenly read

—— Marie Claire
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