The meaning of night - Michael Cox

A cold October night, 1854. In a dark passageway, an innocent man is stabbed to death.

So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver, book lover, scholar and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. This seems the stuff of dreams, until a chance discovery convinces Glyver that he was righ - greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. And he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he now knows is rightfully his.

Glyver's path leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most enchanting country houses. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onwards, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt.

Thirty years in the writing, THE MEANING OF NIGHT is a stunning achievement. Full of drama and passion, it is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.

Michael Cox was born in 1948. After graduating from Cambridge, he was a singer-songwriter before joining Oxford University Press. His first novel,The Meaning of Night, published in 2006 to wide critical acclaim, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and nominated for Waterstones Newcomer of the Year at the British Book Awards. Michael Cox died in 2009.

'A novel of fate and free will, forensic detection and blind love, crime and its justifications. The Atmosphere crackles, but beneath al;l is a sly sense of humour. The plotting is second to non - a finely tuned yet extravagantly complex piece of clockwork'
Evening Standard

Independent on Sunday

'Impressively fluent first novel'
Sunday Telegraph

Independent

'This is a gripping page-turner for dark winter evenings'
Good Book Guide

'Unusual and remarkable... Key to the convincing nature of this confession is Cox's grasp of the minutiae of the times and the language of the period, so that the reader at times forgets this isn't a contemporary of Dickens'
South China Sunday Morning Post

'A brooding, sinister work. Bedecked in all the literary adornments of the period, it seeps with questions about the nature of good and evil, fate, inheritance, love and, above all, faith'
Fiona Atherton, Scotsman