Description

“Robert Harris is, simply put, masterful.”—Karin Slaughter

A spellbinding novel of passion, intrigue, and betrayal set in England in the months leading to the Great War from the bestselling author of Act of Oblivion, Fatherland, The Ghostwriter, and Munich.

Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe.

In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley—aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless—is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as “The Coterie.” She’s also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer with Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly, what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government—and will alter the course of political history.

An unrivaled master of seamlessly weaving fact and fiction, Precipice is another electrifying thriller from the brilliant imagination of Robert Harris.

About the Author

Robert Harris is the author of Act of Oblivion, Pompeii, Enigma, and Fatherland. He has been a television correspondent with the BBC and a newspaper columnist for London’s Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph. His novels have sold more than ten million copies and been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife and four children. 

Praise For…

“Robert Harris is, simply put, masterful.” — Karin Slaughter, New York Times and international bestselling author

"Act of Oblivion delivers a galloping adventure, with a novel of ideas craftily packed into its saddlebags.” — Wall Street Journal on Act of Oblivion

"Veteran actor Tim McInnerny delivers a masterly narration of Harris’s novel. He truly inhabits the characters, his voice and manner finely tuned to the personality and convictions of each: Goffe, a fanatical, millenarian Puritan; Whalley, more practical and ultimately disillusioned; Nayler, smoothly menacing, but prey to depression . . . this production is perfect." — Washington Post

“Fast-paced. . . . wonderfully detailed . . . clever.” — New York Times Book Review on Act of Oblivion