My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy, suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet... An international bestseller, The Lovely Bones is a luminous and astonishing novel about life and death, forgiveness and vengeance, memory and forgetting — but, above all, about finding light in the darkest of places.

'Compulsive enough to read in a single sitting, brilliantly intelligent, elegantly constructed and ultimately intriguing' The Times First published in 2002, The Lovely Bones became an instant worldwide bestseller. There are now over ten million copies in print. A film adaptation of the novel, directed by Peter Jackson, was released in 2010. Susie Salmon was fourteen years old when she was murdered by a man from her neighbourhood. Now in heaven, she can have whatever she wishes for except the one thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on earth. Susie watches from above as her suburban family is torn apart by grief; as her friends grow up, fall in love, and do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. In time, Susie will realise that even in death, life is not quite out of reach... In 2012 Picador celebrate our 40th anniversary. During that time we have published many prize-winning and bestselling authors including Bret Easton Ellis and Cormac McCarthy, Alice Sebold and Helen Fielding, Graham Swift and Alan Hollinghurst. Years later, Picador continue to bring readers the very best contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across the globe.

Now in paperback: Alice Sebold's luminous first novel — one of the most celebrated literary debuts of recent seasons — that builds out of a family's grief the most hopeful and joyful of stories.