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Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Novel Award

In this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster.

Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long?

Caro and her younger half-brother, Pauly, arrive at the High House after her father and stepmother fall victim to a faraway climate disaster--but not before they call and urge Caro to leave London. In their new home, a converted summer house cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally, the two pairs learn to live together. Yet there are limits to their safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy--the former village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything--can teach them as his health fails.

A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival under the threat of extinction, The High House is a stunning, emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the world.

When, as a child, Carter Anderson loses his father's key ring which holds the keys to doors in the High House--a place which controls the balance of the universe--it has disastrous effects when a sinister group of anarchists gain access to the House.

In a world divided by those who create and others who destroy, stands the High House, a mystical dwelling filled with twisting corridors, magical books, and secret passageways. For Master Carter Anderson, the task is to protect not just the House, but the whole world from the forces of evil. Now a new foe arises, The Man in the Dark. Powered by the Anarchists, he steals the High House's magical cornerstone and lays the foundation for the False House -- unleashing a hellish reign of terror upon all who cross its threshold.