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The Horseman by Tim Pears, the first book in the new West Country Trilogy

We’re pleased to be offering 10 sets of Tim Pears’ The Horseman, the first in a new trilogy and a stunning portrait of a rural Devon community where life’s rhythms are dictated by the land.

As setting is such an integral part of the novel, we would love to offer these books to library reading groups in the West Country in particular, and so priority will be given here.

Reading groups are asked to complete the review forms they’ll receive with their books. By returning your completed forms, you’ll also have the opportunity to receive proof copies of the second book in the series.

We’ll be offering similar promotions for the second and third books in the series, including author events, so now is the perfect time to get involved.

To take part, apply now before 24 September.

About the book

From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a hypnotic pastoral novel about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911.

1911. In a forgotten valley on the Devon–Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked
only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year old Leopold Sercombe skips
school to help his father, a carter. Skinny and pale, Leo dreams of a job on the estate’s
stud farm. He is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg,
breeches and riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger’s hat, he discovers
Miss Charlotte, the Master’s daughter. And so begins a friendship between the children,
bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries – boundaries that
become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence.

About the author

Tim Pears is the author of eight novels: In the Light of Morning, In the Place of Fallen
Leaves
(winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), Wake
Up, Blenheim Orchard, In a Land of Plenty
(made into a ten-part BBC series), A
Revolution of the Sun, Landed
(shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and
the 2011 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, winner of the MJA Open Book
Awards 2011), and Disputed Land. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham
Festival of Literature and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and
has taught creative writing at Ruskin College and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford with his
wife and children.

Closing date: 24 September

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