Jonathan Ball Publishers is delighted to announce Wish You Were Here – a new novel from international number one bestseller Jodi Picoult!

Wish You Were Here is a compellingly urgent read and an insightful examination of the resilience of humanity and what we need from life.

About the book

It’s Friday the 13th and Diana is an ambitious young appraiser at Sotheby’s in New York. She’s about to go on a long-awaited holiday, where she knows Finn, her surgeon boyfriend, will propose and the next stage of her carefully planned life will begin.

But it is Friday the 13th of March 2020.

The new virus hits. Finn can’t leave the city, and suggests she goes without him. In the Galapagos, unable to get back to her real life, Diana learns about the devastation hitting the world as she hears intermittently from her boyfriend. She’s discovering a new side to herself and a new kind of life, when everything changes …

Jodi Picoult says:

‘Humans mark tragedy. Everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot, when the Twin Towers fell, and the last thing they did before the world shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In those early days, I was so anxious that I couldn’t concentrate on anything – which meant that I couldn’t distract myself with my work. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t even read … I started working on a novel, attempting to jog my muscle memory and somehow my brain remembered how to craft a book. But the whole time I was working on that story, I was wondering: how are we going to chronicle this pandemic? Who will do it? How do we tell the tale of how the world shut down, and why, and what we learned? I hope Wish You Were Here does some of that.’

Carolyn Mays (Hodder Managing Director and publisher of all Picoult’s novels in the UK) says:

‘It was such a thrill to see this fabulous new novel arrive in my in-box. Jodi Picoult’s characters chronicle the early months of the pandemic with the frustration and rage we all felt, but find hope and bright moments in it, and ultimately, a way to make it matter.’

Jodi Picoult is the author of 25 internationally bestselling novels, including My Sister’s Keeper, The Storyteller and Small Great Things. She has also co-written two young adult books with her daughter Samantha van Leer, Between the Lines and Off the Page. She lives in New Hampshire, USA.

Categories Fiction International

Tags Jodi Picoult Jonathan Ball Publishers New books New releases Wish You Were Here