When Captain John Lacroix returns home from Spain, wounded, unconscious, and alone, he believes that he has seen the worst of what men may do. It is 1809, and in England’s wars against Napoleon, the Battle of Corunna stands out as a humiliation: a once-proud army forced to retreat, civilized men reduced to senseless acts of cruelty.

Slowly regaining his health, Lacroix journeys north to the misty isles of Scotland with the intent of forgetting the horrors of the war. Unbeknownst to him, however, something else has followed him back from the war—something far more dangerous than a memory. . .

Praise for Andrew Miller

“His writing is vivid, precise, and constantly surprising. It reads easily, suspends life until it is read and is a source of wonder and delight.” —Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times

“Andrew Miller . . . is another Hilary Mantel. Pure [is] elegantly written and intricately constructed, with an ending that, like those mirrors at Versailles, cleverly reflects the beginning.”—The New York Times

Andrew Miller
Andrew Miller’s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997; it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm’s Song and The Land in Winter, which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2025. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.

• Jul 13 2020
  “Miller keeps readers engaged...This is escapism at a compelling level.”
  — The Minneapolis Star Tribune
• Nov 11 2019
  “...acutely imagines the war-scarred psychology of his characters.”
  — The New Yorker
• Nov 4 2019
  “...captures the venues and feelings of the period exceptionally well.”
  — Historical Novel Society
• Oct 18 2019
  “...an impressive balance between adventure and atmosphere.”
  — The Wall Street Journal
• Sep 10 2019
  While You’re Waiting for the Next Hilary Mantel, Try Andrew Miller
  — New York Times Book Review
• Jun 17 2019
  “Miller is in fine form here”
  — Kirkus Reviews