Since she was 12 years old, Belle has lived with a secret—a secret which cuts her off from her family, and isolates her wherever she goes. Against the unfolding horror of the Great War, her search for peace takes her from the brittle gaiety of English country house society to the remote Scottish mansions where her grandmother's tragedy was played out, and to the battlefields of Flanders. As the scarred and shattered men return from the trenches, and an influenza epidemic scythes across the country, Belle must finally discover a way to break free of her secret or lose everything.
Michelle Paver was born in central Africa but went to England as a child. After earning a degree in biochemistry from Oxford University, she became a partner in a London law firm but eventually gave that up to write full-time. The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series came from Michelle's lifelong passions for animals, anthropology, and the distant past-as well as an encounter with a large bear in a remote valley in Southern California. To research the books, Michelle has traveled to Finland, Greenland, Sweden, Norway, Arctic Canada, and the Carpathian Mountains. She has slept on reindeer skins, swum with wild killer whales, and gotten nose to nose with polar bears--and, of course, wolves. The first four books have been made into widely acclaimed audiobooks, read by Ian McKellen.
