The Whole World
Delacorte Press/Random House
May 2010
Hardcover, 304 pages
ISBN 978-0-385-34288-9 (0-385-34288-8)
Ebook, 304 pages
ISBN 978-0-440-33957-1 (0-440-33957-X)

BUY The Whole World.

American students Polly and Liv are giddy over the accents and architecture of Cambridge University. They both fall for the same charming graduate student.

Then he disappears.

Told through five narrators whose personal obsessions limit what each of them sees, THE WHOLE WORLD is the story of the desperation and malice that take them by surprise while they're all looking elsewhere.

Read the first page.
Read reviews.

From the book jacket:

At once a sensual and irresistible mystery and a haunting work of rich psychological insight and emotional depth, The Whole World marks the beginning of a brilliant literary career for a superb, limitlessly gifted author.

Set in the richly evoked environs of Cambridge, England, The Whole World unearths the desperate secrets kept by five complex people--students, professors, detectives, husbands, mothers--secrets leading to explosive consequences.

Two Americans studying at Cambridge, Polly and Liv, become quick friends, strangers to their new home, survivors of past mistakes. They find a common interest in Nick, a handsome, charming, seemingly guileless graduate student. For a time, the three engage in harmless flirtation, growing closer while doing research for Gretchen Paul, the blind daughter of a famed novelist. But betrayal, followed by Nick's inexplicable disappearance, brings long-buried histories to the surface.

The investigation raises countless questions, the newspapers report all the most salacious details--from the crime that scars Polly's past to the searing truths concealed in the photographs Gretchen cannot see. Soon the three young lovers will discover how little they know about each other, and how devastating the ripples of past actions can be.