Melmoth

Twenty years ago, Helen Franklin did something she cannot forgive herself for, and she's spent every day since trying to hide from its memory.

A manuscript has come into her possession, filled with the darkest chapters of history. Each records a tall, silent woman in black, with unblinking eyes and bleeding feet: Melmoth, the loneliest being in the world. Condemned to walk the earth forever, she beguiles the guilty and lures them to a life wandering at her side.

As Helen's past catches up with her, the sheltered life she has crafted is about to change forever and she must choose which path to take.

'A novel that manages that vanishingly rare feat - being at once hugely readable and profoundly important...'

- Observer

Read the opening pages here...

Praise for Melmoth:

'Beautiful, devastating, brilliant'
-Marian Keyes

'Astonishingly dark ... exquisitely balanced'
-Francis Spufford

'Packs a punch of atmosphere, creepiness, fear and melancholy'
-Susan Hill

'Hugely readable and profoundly important ... Perry's masterly piece of postmodern gothic is one of the great achievements of our century'

-The Observer

'Richly atmospheric, daring and surprising'
-Melissa Harrison

Sarah Perry stands out as an exhilaratingly bold storyteller

- Mail on Sunday

Scary and smart, but also a philosophical inquiry into the nature of love and will.

- Washington Post

Rich, elegant and atmospheric

- Irish Times

Mythic, ominous and sensitively human, Melmoth is haunting in all the best ways

- Frances Hardinge

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE

OBSERVER FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018

Melmoth is published by Serpent's Tail