Casting Off

By Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Second World War has finally ended and so begins a new era of freedom and opportunity for the Cazalet family in Casting Off, the fourth novel in Elizabeth Jane Howard's magnificent Cazalet Chronicles.

'Compelling, moving, unputdownable . . . Maybe my favourite books ever' - Marian Keyes, bestselling author of My Favourite Mistake

The Cazalet cousins are now in their twenties, trying to piece together their lives in the aftermath of the Second World War. Louise is faced with her father’s new mistress and her mother’s grief at his betrayal, while suffering a loveless marriage of her own. Clary is struggling to understand why her beloved father chose to stay in France long after it was safe to return to Britain, and both she and Polly are madly in love with much older men.

As Polly, Clary and Louise face the truth about the adult world, their fathers – Rupert, Hugh and Edward – must make choices that will decide their own, and the family’s, future.

'She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts' – Hilary Mantel, bestselling author of The Mirror and the Light

Casting Off is the heartbreaking and heartwarming fourth instalment of Elizabeth Jane Howard's bestselling series. It is followed by All Change, the fifth and final book in the series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Dec 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9780330526968

Elizabeth Jane Howard

Elizabeth Jane Howard was the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels. The Cazalet Chronicles – The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off and All Change – have become established as modern classics and have been adapted for a major BBC television series and for BBC Radio 4. In 2002 Macmillan published Elizabeth Jane Howard's autobiography, Slipstream. In that same year she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. She died, aged 90, at home in Suffolk on 2 January 2014.