Published in 2025
307 pages
8 hours and 57 minutes
Clare Leslie Hall is a novelist and journalist who lives in the wilds of Dorset, England, with her family. Under the name Clare Empson, she published two domestic noir thrillers, Him and Mine, that were published in the UK and Germany. She has always loved The Go Between by LP Hartley and Broken Country is a nod to it, featuring a forbidden love affair with catastrophic repercussions. Broken Country is her US debut.
What is this book about?
Everyone in the village said nothing good would come of Gabriel’s return. And as Beth looks at the man she loves on trial for murder, she can’t help thinking they were right.
Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.
It was Frank who picked up the pieces and together they built a home very different from the one she’d imagined with Gabriel. Watching her husband and son, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.
But when Gabriel comes back, all Beth’s certainty about who she is and what she wants crumbles. Even after ten years, their connection is instant. She knows it’s wrong and she knows people could get hurt. But how can she resist a second chance at first love?
A love story with the pulse of a thriller, Broken Country is a heart-pounding novel of impossible choices and devastating consequences.
