Astray

Written by Emma Donoghue

Narrated by Dion Graham, James Langton, Khristine Hvam and 2 more

Counterfeiter. Dishwasher. Prostitute. Attorney. Sculptor. Mercenary. Elephant. Corpse.

The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's fact-inspired fictions have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters. They cross other borders, too: those of race, law, sex and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.

Donoghue describes the brutal plot hatched by a slave in conjunction with his master's wife to set them both free; she draws out the difficulties of gold mining in the Yukon, even in the supposedly plentiful early days, and she takes us to an early Puritan community in Massachusetts unsettled by an invented sex scandal. Astray also includes 'The Hunt', a shocking confession of one soldier's violent betrayal during the American Revolution, which has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award.

Astray is a sequence of fourteen stories by the prize-winning author of Room and The Sealed Letter. These strange, true tales light up four centuries of wanderings, offering a past in scattered pieces, and a surprising and moving history for restless times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Feb 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781447299349

Emma Donoghue

Born in Dublin in 1969, and now living in Canada, Emma Donoghue writes fiction (novels and short stories, contemporary and historical including The Pull of the Stars), as well as drama for screen and stage. Room, was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes, selling between two and three million copies in forty languages. Donoghue was nominated for an Academy Award for her 2015 adaptation starring Brie Larson. She co-wrote the screenplay for the film of her novel The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh and distributed by Netflix.