The Glasshouse Year
A botanist, a ruined Victorian orangery and twelve months to bring it back to life. The new novel from the author of the Saltmarsh Quartet.
“Luminous, unhurried and full of green light.” — The Literary Review
Take a book down from the shelf.
Seven novels, one long coastline. Choose a spine to pull it out.
The Lantern Keeper’s Daughter
A lighthouse, a missing father, a winter that will not end.
When the Merrow light goes dark in the storm of 1952, seventeen-year-old Ada Pell climbs the tower to find her father gone and the logbook torn in half. Everyone on the island has a version of what happened. None of them agree.
- Pages
- 384
- Hardback
- $18.99
- Also in
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A Harbour of Small Hours
Every boat that leaves Merrow carries a secret back.
Ten years on, Ada runs the harbour office and keeps the island’s ledgers — and its silences. Then a fishing boat returns with one man too many aboard, and the past starts to come in with the tide.
- Pages
- 412
- Hardback
- $18.99
- Also in
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Where the Tide Forgets
Some things the sea gives back. Some it keeps.
A causeway, a drowned chapel and a summer of hearings. The third Saltmarsh novel follows Ada’s daughter Nell to the mainland courts, where the island’s oldest quarrel is finally put on the record.
- Pages
- 436
- Hardback
- $18.99
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The Last Light at Merrow
The final Saltmarsh novel. The light is going out for good.
The lighthouse is to be automated and the island emptied. As the last keepers pack forty years into crates, Ada and Nell open the logbook one final time — and read the half that was never meant to be found.
- Pages
- 468
- Hardback
- $19.99
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The Cartographer’s Widow
Her husband mapped the coast. She maps the lies.
Elena’s debut. In 1890s Cornwall, a widow inherits a cabinet of unfinished maps and discovers the coastline her husband drew does not quite match the one outside her window.
- Pages
- 352
- Hardback
- $16.99
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Paper Birds in Winter
A small novel about a long friendship.
Two women, one bookshop, forty winters. Told in letters slipped between the pages of second-hand books, it is the novel readers press into each other’s hands.
- Pages
- 256
- Hardback
- $15.99
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The Glasshouse Year
New for 2026 — a family, a ruined orangery, twelve months to save it.
A botanist returns to her grandmother’s crumbling estate with one year to bring the Victorian glasshouse back to life before it is sold. Out in hardback this spring.
- Pages
- 398
- Hardback
- $22.00
- Also in
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I grew up on a small island where the ferry ran twice a week.
Elena Ward writes long, weather-soaked novels about islands, families and the stories communities agree not to tell. She lives in Falmouth with her husband, a retired harbourmaster, and a deaf greyhound named Brontë. Her books have been translated into 23 languages and adapted for BBC Radio 4.
What readers and critics say
“Ward writes the sea the way other novelists write a character — patient, cruel and impossible to forget.”
“A quartet that earns every one of its pages. The ending of Merrow left me genuinely winded.”
“Paper Birds in Winter is the kind of book you buy twice: once for yourself, once to give away.”
Upcoming events
- 14Oct 2026ReadingReserve a seat
The Glasshouse Year — launch evening
Hatchards Hall, London — 7:00 pm · reading, Q&A and signing · £8 incl. wine
- 22Oct 2026FestivalReserve a seat
Cheltenham Literature Festival
Cheltenham Town Hall — 2:30 pm · in conversation with critic Miriam Hale
- 5Nov 2026OnlineReserve a seat
Writing the island novel — a masterclass
Live on Zoom — 6:30 pm GMT · 90 minutes · £15, recording included
Notes from the writing desk
On writing in the hour before dawn
Why my best pages arrive at 5 a.m., and the small rituals that get me to the desk.
The fountain pen I wrote Merrow with
Four novels, one second-hand pen and a lot of blue-black ink on my fingers.
Ten books that taught me about weather
Storms, fogs and long hot summers — the novels I reread when a chapter needs sky.
A letter, once a month.
Early chapters, cover reveals, tour dates and the occasional recipe from Merrow. Around 9,400 readers already open it with their morning tea.
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