Hush, little baby - Katharine Davies

Eira is alone. Thirty-six years old and living on her own. She loved Jack, but their relationship had to end - she could never have a baby with an alcoholic. Now she works in a quiet museum, in the middle of a park, desperately lonely and aching for someone to love. And one spring morning, she finds a baby in a box on the museum steps.

Looking back to one unforgettable summer many years ago, that began as a hot, magical idyll but ended in tragedy, we see the painful confusion of a young girl caught up in very adult affairs.The guilt about what happened will stay with and shape Eira, and the horrific discovery of her thin and mysterious older sister's secret will scar her.

In Katharine Davies's haunting and many-layered story, the pain of an intense and unfulfilled longing is evoked in luminous and beautiful writing. Hush, Little Baby is about love and youth, longing and age, but it is very much a poignant and vivid exploration of a woman's experience and the visceral need to be a mother.