The Comet Seekers

by Helen Sedgwick, Penguin/ Random House.

Romantics will adore this sweeping, magical debut novel. Roisin and François encounter one another in the icy wastelands of Antarctica. Roisin is a scientist, fascinated by the skies and the comets that appear at intervals throughout her lifetime. François is a French chef and part of the support team for the research trip. This is their story – the story of their individual lives and the paths they have taken to find themselves together in such an inhospitable landscape. Yet it is also the story of other lives lived over the course of a thousand years, lives glimpsed only when a comet burns across the sky.