One of the U.K.'s most beloved writers--with over 1.5 million books in print--returns with "a beautiful portrait of family life amid an unravelling crisis" -- The Telegraph

It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained in months. Gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe and Robert Riordan tells his wife, Gretta, that he is going around the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't return.

The search for Robert brings Gretta's children--two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce--back home, each with different ideas as to where their father has gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share. A journey back to Connemara, Ireland, brings surprises, insights and revelations, as each confronts the knotty tangle of family life and love.

Elegant and compelling, Instructions for a Heatwave secures Maggie O'Farrell's position as one of the best of the new generation of British writers.