Sands of Time. Barbara Erskine
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in 2000
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Barbara Erskine 2016
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780006512097
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007320981
Version: 2017-09-08
If poets’ verses are but stories, so are food and raiment stories. So is all the world a story. So is man of dust a story.
St Columba
Contents
‘You’ve Got a Book to Write, Remember?’
Keep Reading Barbara Erskine’s Novels
This third collection of short stories has allowed me to fulfil, at least in part, my ambition to write a sequel to Whispers in the Sand. One of the hardest stages in the writing of a novel is finishing it. For weeks, perhaps months, I will have been looking forward to writing those two magic words, The End – words that mean a conclusion to obsession, to long hours, to RSI at the keyboard and to saying no to invitations I would so much love to accept. When the moment finally comes, however, saying goodbye to the characters, reconciling the urge to give them a happy ending with the temptation to leave the reader on a knife edge – after all, real life doesn’t provide neat endings – and parting with the characters, people who have become closer in many ways than family or friends, and whom