Winner of the 2021 Costa Novel Award Finalist for the Women's Prize in Fiction Named a Best Book of the Month by Entertainment Weekly, PopSugar, Bustle, Chicago Review of Books , PureWow, a Best Book of Summer by Daily Beast and a Good Housekeeping Best Book of 2021 “Full of dramatic twists and turns right up until its moving, beautiful end.” ―NPR Books At fifty-one years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world around them. Inside its walls, they make music, and in its garden, they grow everything they need to survive. To an outsider, it looks like poverty; to them, it is home. But when Dot dies unexpectedly, the world they’ve so carefully created begins to fall apart. The cottage they love, and the security it offered, is taken back by their landlord, exposing the twins to harsh truths and even harsher realities. Seeing a new future, Julius becomes torn between the loyalty he feels towards his sister and his desire for independence, while Jeanie struggles to find work and a home for them both. And just when it seems there might be a way forward, a series of startling secrets from their mother’s past come to the surface, forcing the twins to question who they are, and everything they know of their family’s history. In Unsettled Ground , award-winning author Claire Fuller masterfully builds a tale of sacrifice and hope, of homelessness and hardship, of love and survival, in which two marginalized and remarkable people uncover long-held family secrets and, in their own way, repair, recover, and begin again. An Amazon Best Book of May 2021: After just four novels, Claire Fuller has carved out her own space in books—rural, vividly imagined, simultaneously contemporary and classic-feeling, and draped in secrets. In Fuller’s latest, Jeanie and Julius are 51-year-old twins living in what they consider to be simple splendor. They share a cottage with their mother Dot, where they sing folk songs, eat from their garden, and eschew most modern technology. But when Dot dies, the siblings are quickly exposed to a different reality. The twins adjust as best they can, Julius perhaps better than his sister; but they are essentially cast to the wolves as they struggle to keep afloat in a world that they had hitherto been protected from. And just as they seem destined to find their footing, they begin to uncover a trail of lies their mother had been maintaining. But this is a Claire Fuller novel, so you knew that was coming. Fuller has a gift for capturing the good feeling of life—that warm pocket that family can create—and she has an equal gift for showing how fragile the structures are that hold it together. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review "Timeless. . . . [a] shadowy family saga, which is marked by illicit love, violence and blood debts."— The Wall Street Journal "Engrossing."— Entertainment Weekly "A simple but powerful story of rural poverty, sibling relationships and, perhaps above all, resilience."— PureWow "Powerful. . . . fascinating."— BookRiot "A quiet tale of loss and survival."— Good Housekeeping "Transfixing."— Chicago Review of Books "A winner."— The Center for Fiction, Bookstore Pick "An unnerving and emotional novel of family secrets, vulnerability and resilience."— Shelf Awareness "Rapturous."— The San Diego Union Tribune "One mystery after another arises and two siblings who have been left behind by the modern world face changes both gentle and profound."— The Daily Beast "A darkly poignant novel about an unusual family."— Texas Public Radio "Revelatory. . . . a powerful, beautiful novel."— The Times (UK) "Fuller explores the painful realities of poverty and social isolation with immense sensitivity in this multilayered and emotionally astute novel."— The Guardian "An intriguing premise made more so by the paucity of novels featuring vulnerable older adults."— Financial Times "Superb."— Daily Mail "If you’re a reader who lives for contemplative storytelling and perfectly wrought characters, this author is for you."— BookPage "Ambitious."— The Times Literary Supplement "A page-turner. . . . reflecting the humble beauty of country life in every page, Unsettled Ground will appeal to a wide array of readers." — Harvard Review "An intriguing, moving novel that will make you question assumptions you have about modern life."— Tracy Chevalier "A gorgeously written and moving portrait of a family struggling against time."— Lucy Tan, author of What We Were Promised "Another sly psychological treat from Claire Fuller, who just keeps on getting better with each book."— Laline Paull, author of The Ice "Fuller’s prose is darkly elegant, her eye for character astute and humane, and her sense of place vividly atmospheric—here is a writer of great skill, sensitivity, and subtlety."— Lucy