The Book of Lies

Author(s): Mary Horlock

Location(s): Guernsey

Era(s): 1980s 1960s

Location

Content

Catherine’s story occurs during times of affluence and security in 1980s Guernsey.When you live on an island as small as Guernsey, it’s hard to imagine that secrets can stay secret. But they can and they do. And fifteen-year-old Catherine Rozier knows the best one yet. It’s about the night her friend Nicolette disappeared on the cliffs by Clarence Batterie. Catherine wants to take the blame for what happened, but the story she starts telling isn’t hers alone. There are other people on this island who have got away with murder, and Catherine thinks it’s time the truth came out. Are these just the wild imaginings of a lonely teenager? Decades earlier, someone else stood on these cliffs, at this very spot. Charlie Rozier was almost Catherine’s age when Guernsey was occupied by the Germans. He trusted the one friend he shouldn’t have. Did Catherine make the same mistake? Dwelling on the dark and difficult truths hidden within a family and on an island during the Second World War, The Book of Lies spins together the ? stories told forty years apart ? of Catherine and Charlie, who come to understand that no truth is as simple as it seems.

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