Centres around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities.

One snowy day in Copenhagen, six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop. The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiah's neighbour, Smilla, suspects murder. She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth, following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow.

Madelene is married to Burden, an ambitious zoologist, comfortably off and a chronic alcoholic. The ape is Erasmus, who comes ashore in London from sailing boat called The Ark . Burden aims to use the ape as the means to fulfil his ambition to direct the London Zoo. Erasmus and Madelene elope.

Eight tales, all concerned with love and its conditions, on the night of 19 March, 1929.

The story of the birth of the 20th century and how it develops in Denmark is told through the histories of four families and the young that grow up in them. Peter Hoeg is the author of "Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow", "Borderliners" and "The Woman and the Ape".

Latest by the author of 'Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow'. Three damaged children suffer the regime of an experimental school where time is an instrument of oppression to be resisted and subverted in this tense and haunting novel. Hardback sold very well.

Kaspar Krone is a circus clown with a gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of an order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities in return for his help safeguarding a group of children with mystical abilities.