The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Locus Award

A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman's first new novel for adults since his #1 New York Times bestseller Anansi Boys.

This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real...

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

Neil Gaiman is the creator of The Sandman comic book series and the bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere (1995), Stardust (1999), the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning American Gods (2001), Coraline (2002), Anansi Boys (2005), The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013), Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett, 1990) and a retelling of the Norse myths: Norse Mythology (2017). His short story collections include Smoke and Mirrors (1998) and Fragile Things (2006). His screenwriting credits include the original BBC TV series of Neverwhere (1996), Dave McKean's first feature film, Mirrormask (2005), two Doctor Who episodes, and Good Omens (2019).