Lillie has come a long way from the shimmering heat, big skies and rocky mountains of her home. A long way not just in terms of distance, but in terms of experience. For it is here in England, a land of cold, scuffed and tumbling streets, that she finds the love she has needed for so long.

Lovesong is a romance, but it is also a tightly woven thriller, a sumptuous and truly extraordinary work. Drawing on the themes of displacement and home that threaded through her previous novels, Gemmell has crafted a gripping plot, peopled it with sympathetic characters and enfolded it in language of startling originality and beauty.

`Lovesong is a lovely, lyrical creation that has melody and melancholy aching through its sentences . . . bewitchingly good’ Elle, Book of the Month

`A strange and lovely novel . . . The plot, carefully wrought, surprising but utterly convincing, rushes the protagonists across the world and back, through layers of innocence, love, guilt and sacrifice, to the ultimate end – and beyond – to the hope of a new generation’ – The Times

`An arrestingly strange love story . . . it’s punchy but poetic and above all, heartbreaking’ Glamour, Must-read of the Month

`One of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time’ Time Out, NY