Wild Dark Shore

Shearwater Island sits in the cold ocean near Antarctica, a wind-scoured research station with a vault that holds millions of the world's seeds as insurance against catastrophe. The caretaker, Dominic Salt, lives there with his three children: Raff, Fen and young Orly. The sea is rising around them, and the family is getting ready to evacuate.

Then a woman is dragged from the water, half-drowned. She gives her name as Rowan, but she does not fully explain how she came to be shipwrecked on such a remote spot. The Salts are keeping secrets of their own, and the island has no room for strangers who hold things back.

Storms batter the station and the vault as the weeks pass. Suspicion builds alongside attraction, and each person has to decide whom to trust with their life.

This is a climate thriller with a strong sense of place, set in near-total isolation among a very small cast. The mood is atmospheric and tense, and the pace pushes forward as the weather worsens. Grief and family sit at the centre of the book, along with the question of how far people can rely on one another and on a damaged natural world.