The Children's Book »

Byatt has done great things for the bookworm's reputation: Her books of and about literary scholarship (particularly the Victorian poetry investigation/love story Possession) take reading out of dusty libraries and into the romance of real, modern life.

From the Booker Prize winning author of Possession, a dazzling new novel that spans the years from the Victorian era through World War I and centers around a famous children s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.

When Olive Wellwood s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the Victoria and Albert Museum a boy who could be a character out of one of Olive s magical tales she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.

But the midsummer bacchanals the Wellwoods host at their rambling country house and the private books that Olive writes for each of her seven children conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives of adults and children alike unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods is slowly uncovered. Yet a far larger...

The Barnes & Noble Review

A. S. Byatt published her first novel in 1964 and, over the ensuing two and a half decades, produced a series of successors that were admired by critics but had little reach beyond intellectual circles. Yet when Possession, her literary romance and thriller, became a bestseller on its publication in 1990, the author evinced no surprise. Quite the contrary: this time, she said, she had written with a larger audience in mind. In tone and scope, the resulting novel proved a gripping and original blend of the Victorian and postmodern, serving up two love stories, some improbably sexy critical theory, and countless deft pastiches of Rossetti and Browning. "I knew people would like it," Byatt told The New York Times. "It's the only one I've written to be liked, and I did it partly to show off."