The Lessons

A modern-day Brideshead Revisited: a group of friends at university, then several years after, when hopes have been shattered and friends and lovers betrayed

Hidden away in an Oxford back street is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to any but the few who possess a key to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous.

FROM THE WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE POWER

'A seductive homage to Donna Tartt and Brideshead Revisited' Metro

James, always the outsider, enters Oxford - high seat of privilege, wealth and ambition. There he meets Mark Winters - dissolute, astonishingly, heartbreakingly rich, and pitilessly cruel - and the fellow students he has gathered around him: untouchable Emmanuella; on-again/off-again Simon and Franny; and passionate, true Jess.

The nights - and many of the days - become one long party. Friendships are made, and broken. Lovers swapped, or dropped. It is all beguiling and bewitching. Everything James dreamed of but never quite believed in.

But after university they are each cast out into an indifferent world. Free of Mark and his dark influence, they are lost to one another, until one night tragedy strikes . . .

'Beautifully written, satisfyingly complex' New Statesman

'A world as beautiful and sinister as any in a fairytale' Independent