The Tortoise and the Hare

The magnetic Evelyn Gresham, fifty-two, is a barrister of considerable distinction. He has everything life can offer: a gracious home; a beautiful, devoted younger wife; a son who adores him. Their neighbor, Blanche Silcox, is a plain, tweed-wearing woman of fifty who rides, shoots, fishes, and drives a Rolls-Royce in every way the opposite of his wife. Their world is conventional country life at its most idyllic: how can its gentle surfaces be disturbed? A love story with a difference, subtly demonstrating that in affairs of the heart, the race is not necessarily to the swift or fair.

Elizabeth Jenkins is a distinguished biographer (of Jane Austen, Lady Caroline Lamb, and Elizabeth I), historian, and novelist. The Tortoise and the Hare, her sixth novel, was first published in 1953, and is generally considered her greatest work of fiction. Hilary Mantel is the award-winning author of such works as Beyond Black, Fludd, Giving Up the Ghost, and A Place of Greater Safety.