Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • #1 AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR 2025

From the author who gave us Migrations and Once There Were Wolves, Charlotte McConaghy returns with a novel that will leave you breathless. Wild Dark Shore is the kind of book that reminds you why you fell in love with reading in the first place—the kind you’ll want to press into the hands of everyone you know.

Picture this: a remote island near Antarctica, home to the world’s largest seed bank. The Salt family—a father and his three children—are the last caretakers as the seas rise and the world changes. Then a storm arrives, fierce and unrelenting, and with it, a mysterious woman named Rowan, washed ashore and barely alive.

What unfolds is a story of secrets, survival, and the fierce bonds we forge when everything else falls away. McConaghy’s prose is stunning—evocative nature writing that makes you feel the salt spray and hear the wind howling. But beneath the beauty lies tension: sabotaged radios, a freshly dug grave, and questions about who can be trusted when you’re the last people on earth.

This is literary fiction that reads like a thriller, a family drama wrapped in ecological urgency, a meditation on what we’re willing to sacrifice to protect what matters most. Perfect for readers who loved Station Eleven or The Overstory, this is a novel about hope, heartbreak, and the impossible choices we make for love.

Come browse our shelves—we’d love to put this extraordinary book in your hands.

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