Book of the Year in the Observer and Guardian

'Katherine Carlyle is fluid, visual, deft as a thriller ... You're gripped exactly as you would be by a movie...Shocking and satisfying all at once' Guardian

Katherine Carlyle was an IVF baby, frozen as an embryo for eight years. Two decades later, she's living a glamorous life in Rome, surrounded by friends, but she's still haunted by the strange circumstances of her conception - her long incarceration in the dark, the cold.
Following a series of random signs and signals that she believes are directed at her, she gives away her laptop, drops her phone in the river, and flies to Berlin, telling no one where she has gone. It's the beginning of a journey that will take her further and further north, from the world she knows into a world in which nothing is predictable or safe...

'Katherine's story, a profound, unnerving meditation on love and existence, is the canvas to which Thomson applies colour and beauty ... Brilliant' Independent

'This riveting and visionary story haunted me long after I finished the last page ... Katherine Carlyle is an extraordinary novel' Deborah Moggach

'A contemporary masterpiece'
Robert McCrum, Observer