The Warm Hands of Ghosts

the sweeping new novel from the international bestselling author

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Summary

World War One, and as shells fall in Northern France, a Canadian nurse searches for her brother believed dead in the trenches.

January 1918. Laura Iven has been discharged from her nurse duties and sent back to Halifax, Canada. Now home, she receives word of her brother's death on the fields of Passchendaele. Believing he is still alive, and determined to find him, Laura returns to France as a volunteer for a hospital near the front line of battle.

She soon hears whispers of ghosts, and a man known to many as the fiddler whose music allows soldiers to forget the traumas of war. Could her brother’s disappearance have anything to do with him?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped underground with an enemy soldier. Against all odds, the two men manage to dig themselves out and, having saved each other’s lives, form an intense bond of friendship.

Now classified as deserters, they are confined to the hellscape of No Man’s Land. And then they meet a man - a fiddler - who seems to have the power to make the murderous chaos surrounding them disappear. But at what price?
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'A wonderful clash of fire and ice ... A book you won't want to let go of.' Diana Gabaldon
'A spectacular tour de force ... I love this book so much and want everyone to read it!' Naomi Novik
'Darkly beautiful and deeply humane ... The Warm Hands of Ghosts will stir your heart, and settle into your bones.' Ava Reid
'Visionary, imaginative and brilliantly written.' Anthony Horowitz
‘This exquisite novel took me over like a haunting ... One of the best historical fantasies I've ever read’ Emma Törzs

About the author

Katherine Arden

Born in Austin, Texas, Katherine Arden has always had a taste for wandering. She spent her junior year of high school in Rennes, France.

Following her acceptance to Middlebury College in Vermont, she deferred enrolment for a year in order to live and study in Russia. At Middlebury, she specialized in French and Russian literature, and her studies included sojourns at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow.

After receiving her BA, she moved to Maui, Hawaii and worked every kind of odd job imaginable, from grant writing and guiding horse tours to serving as a personal tour guide. During this time she wrote what became her debut novel, The Bear and the Nightingale. After a year on the island, she moved to Briançon, France, and spent nine months teaching. She then returned to Maui, where she began writing The Girl in the Tower, the sequel to her debut, and officially launched her career as an author. Currently she lives in Vermont.

She is the author of the Winternight Trilogy for adults and the Small Spaces Quartet for children. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is her eighth novel.

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