Falling

An aging con man sets his sights on a twice-burned, sixtyish woman in this suspenseful novel from the author of the bestselling Cazalet Chronicles.

Harry Kent is the caretaker of a houseboat on the English canal where he lives, subsisting on a nightly dinner of tinned steak and kidney pudding. Although love has been the single most important influence in his life and he believes he knows what the other sex wants, he is separated from his wife and has left behind a string of other failed relationships.

Playwright Daisy Langrish has just bought a weekend cottage in the country. She has an estranged adult daughter, Katya, from her first marriage, and a grandchild. Her second marriage, to a handsome actor seven years younger, recently ended in a painful divorce. When Harry shows up looking for work, Daisy, needy and vulnerable, hires him first as a gardener and then, while she’s away in America, as caretaker. But when she returns to England, she begins to fall for her charming employee. Slowly and with masterly skill, Harry seduces Daisy, drawing her in to his spiraling web of lies and deception.

Told in the alternating voices of Harry and Daisy, Falling builds tension as it winds its way toward a thrilling climax. Both a story of romantic yearning and a cautionary tale inspired by the author’s own experiences, this intimate and dispassionate exploration of the many facets of love is among Elizabeth Jane Howard’s finest literary accomplishments.