Maggie O’Farrell 
Instructions for a Heatwave 
The bestselling novel from the prize-winning author of THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT and HAMNET

The summer read of 2023 from the bestselling author of HAMNET and THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT
”The Riordans will stay in your mind long after you finish this book. They”re funny, infuriating and impossible not to love. They feel like family” Irish Times
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It”s July 1976. In London, it hasn”t rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he”s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn”t come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta”s children – two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce – back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.