A family saga that explores the relationship between people and the landscape in which they live, Jeremy Page's atmospheric and lyrical debut novel is revelatory in its use of language and is the work of a significant new writer. Salt tells of a German airman who falls from the sky in 1945 and lands in the middle of a salt marsh in England. Goose, a local woman, digs him up and brings him home. After staying for just nine months, he vanishes in a makeshift boat, leaving Goose behind with a newborn daughter, Lil. Taught to read the clouds by her mother, Lil's childhood is curious and strange, but when she becomes the object of two brothers' desire, her life takes a tragic turn. Fifteen years later, it is Lil's son, Pip, who attempts to make sense of his family's intriguing history. Beguiled by the lovely Elsie who lives nearby, Pip grows up in the marsh like generations before him—but will their unfortunate past repeat itself?.

From Publishers WeeklyPage (Salt) provides a fresh perspective on parallel lives in his latest novel about life after the death of a child in a seaside English town. Five years after the loss of his young daughter, Guy is living alone on a boat drifting aimlessly about the North Sea. His world is far from uninhabited, however, as the characters of his diary swirl about his mind. He writes about what could have been, imagining a life where his daughter is still alive and accompanying her still-married mother and father on a road trip through America. Interestingly, domestic bliss doesn't permeate the fantasy; the tale is wracked with drama and familial discord. As Guy teeters between two lives, the thin line of reality becomes very hard for him to discern. He struggles to find answers in both the endless sea and vast imagined stretches of America, and eventually comes into contact with another family, also reeling from loss, which gives rise to the possibility of stability and comfort. With lyricism and poise, Page renders a doubly engaging story, with one narrative as intricate and essential as the other. (Dec.) (c) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product DescriptionA stunning follow-up from the author of Salt--"thrilling and memorable" (Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times). After experiencing a devastating tragedy, Guy sets out to sea in an old Dutch barge that has now become his home. Every night, he writes the imagined diary of the man he might have been-and the family he should have had. As he embarks upon the stormy waters of the North Sea-writing about a trip through the small towns and nightclubs of the rural American South-Guy's stories begin to unfold in unexpected ways. And when he meets a mother and daughter, he realizes that it might just be possible to begin his life again. Haunting and exquisitely crafted, Sea Change is a deeply affecting novel of love and family by an acclaimed young writer.

[Read by Michael Healy] An arctic adventure story fueled by obsession, passion, and gothic influence, The Collector of Lost Things is a gripping literary suspense novel. The worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as if the earth had torn in two along this line. This was a place, if there ever was a place, where you could disappear . . . The year is 1845, and young researcher Eliot Saxby is paid to go on an expedition to the Arctic in the hope of finding the remains of the by-now-extinct Great Auk, a large flightless bird of mythical status. Eliot joins a hunting ship, but the crew and the passengers are not what they seem. Caught in the web of relationships on board, Eliot struggles to understand the motivations of the sociopathic Captain Sykes; the silent first mate, French; the flamboyant, laudanum-addicted Bletchley; and most importantly of all, Bletchley's beautiful but strange ''cousin'' Clara. -- As the ship moves further and further into the wilds of the Arctic Sea, Eliot clings to what he believes in, desperate to save Clara but irrevocably drawn back into a past that haunts him -- and a present that confronts him with myriad dangers.**

The year is 1845 and young researcher Eliot Saxby is paid to go on an expedition to the Arctic in the hope of finding remains of the by now extinct Great Auk.He joins a hunting ship, but the crew and the passengers are not what they seem. Caught in the web of relationships on board, Eliot struggles to understand the motivations of the sociopathic Captain Sykes; the silent first mate, French; the flamboyant laudanum-addicted Bletchley; and most importantly of all, Bletchley's beautiful but strange cousin Clara.As the ship moves further and further into the wilds of the Arctic Sea, Eliot clings to what he believes in, desperate to save Clara but drawn irrevocably back into the past that haunts him.