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Samantha Harvey

Biography

Samantha Harvey

Samantha Harvey is the author of five novels --- ORBITAL, THE WESTERN WIND, DEAR THIEF, ALL IS SONG and THE WILDERNESS, which won the Betty Trask Prize --- and one work of nonfiction, THE SHAPELESS UNEASE. Her books have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, and the James Tait Black Prize, as well as longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize. She lives in Bath, UK, and teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University.

Samantha Harvey

Books by Samantha Harvey

by Samantha Harvey - Fiction, Science Fiction

ORBITAL deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space --- not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over 17,000 miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet.

by Samantha Harvey - Memoir, Nonfiction

In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements. Nothing seemed to help. THE SHAPELESS UNEASE is Harvey’s darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and the will to survive.

by Samantha Harvey - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery

It’s 1491. In the small village of Oakham, its wealthiest and most industrious resident, Tom Newman, is swept away by the river during the early hours of Shrove Saturday. Was it murder, suicide or an accident? Narrated from the perspective of local priest John Reve --- patient shepherd to his wayward flock --- a shadowy portrait of the community comes to light through its residents’ tortured revelations. As some of their darkest secrets are revealed, the intrigue of the unexplained death ripples through the congregation. But will Reve, a man with secrets of his own, discover what happened to Newman? And what will happen if he can’t?