June 2026 Book of the Month | Emma recommends... Land - Maggie O'Farrell | Indies Exclusive Edition

Get a special INDIES EXCLUSIVE edition of Land with unique end papers and a digitally signed letter from the author! (NOTE: not hand signed)

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Emma says... Exquisitely written - as you would expect - but on an epic scale never seen before from O'Farrell. Tracing the long legacy of Ireland's 'Great Hunger' in one family, and exploring the deep and sometimes mystical ties of place, this magical sweep of a novel draws you into itself as its characters move across Ireland and to India, Canada, and Italy. Masterful. Beautiful.

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On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland.

The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.