A melancholy event - Dan Glaister

When Stephanie finds a hand-written story in a box of old papers, the path her life is to take becomes clear. Haunted by the true tale of a duel that took place 200 years ago, a ritual as tragic in its inevitability as it is in its futility, she is determined to harness its ghoulish beauty for her own ends.

A Melancholy Event is a tale of obsession, of a story that inhabits and infects the landscape, drawing the characters in this novel into its own world.

Dan Glaister was born and grew up in the south of England. After graduating he worked at Marxism Today before spending time in Nicaragua and Barcelona. He joined The Guardian in the early 1990s and worked there as a writer/sub-editor, then as arts correspondent and arts editor before moving to Los Angeles as west coast correspondent. He returned to the UK in 2011 and continued to write for the Observer. He spends much of his time chasing sheep on the farm in Gloucestershire where he lives with his wife and their family, near the location of this, his first novel.