It is 2059, and the world has crashed. Forty years ago, a catastrophe in the heavens began to slow the planet's rotation to a stop. After ten years of chaotic deceleration and global collapse, the process ended. For the last thirty years, one side of the planet has faced in towards the sun; the other is caught in permanent, frozen night. Most countries have ceased functioning, but a lucky few on the warm side of the earth have survived, in a zone warm enough to grow crops but far enough out to avoid the desert spreading from the central zone. Britain is one of these nations, and survived by cutting itself off as the rest of the world fell apart. Today, it functions as a militarised autocracy, a land stalked by hunger and violence.

Ellen Hopper is a British oceanographer, living on a frostbitten rig in the cold Atlantic. She is a voluntary exile and wants nothing more to do with her country after its slide into authoritarianism and decay. Yet when two officials arrive, demanding she return to London to meet a dying man, she accepts - and begins to unravel a secret that threatens not only the nation's fragile balance but the future of the whole human race.

Praise for The Last Day:

‘A stunningly original thriller set in the world of tomorrow that will make you think about what’s happening today.’ Harlan Coben

‘I read this hungrily and happily. Its intelligence and bravura characterisation will have you turning page after page. A fabulous achievement.’ Stephen Fry