The Fourth Island - Tor Publishing Group
Skip to content
Tor Publishing Group
Home / New Releases / The Fourth Island

The Fourth Island

Cover for the book titled as: The Fourth Island

Available From:

Add to your Goodreads To-Read Shelf

Dark, mournful, and beautiful, Sarah Tolmie's The Fourth Island is a moving and unforgettable story of life and death on the hidden Irish island of Inis Caillte.

Huddled in the sea off the coast of Ireland is a fourth Aran Island, a secret island peopled by the lost, findable only in moments of despair. Whether drowned at sea, trampled by Cromwell's soldiers, or exiled for clinging to the dead, no outsiders reach the island without giving in to dark emotion.

Time and again, The Fourth Island weaves a hypnotic pattern with its prose, presaging doom before walking back through the sweet and sour moments of lives not yet lost. It beautifully melds the certainty of loss with the joys of living, drawing readers under like the tide.

Reviews

“The Fourth Island is both beguiling and unsettling, both mythic and earthy. A truly memorable story, beautifully crafted.” —Juliet Marillier, author of the Warrior Bards series

“The contemplative style, low stakes, and small cast is reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle and is worthy of the association.” —Publishers Weekly

“The Fourth Island is an absolute gem of a story, full of wonder, melancholy and no little wisdom.” —Peadar Ó Guilín

“Part charm, part history, part ravishing spell in itself, The Fourth Island is the best kind of ghost story, reminding us of all the good and the bad in the world. I loved this book.” —Helen Marshall

About the Author

Sarah Tolmie is the author of the Tordotom novella The Fourth Island (2020), the poetry collections Check (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020) and The Art of Dying (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018), the 120-sonnet sequence Trio (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), and the chapbook Sonnet in a Blue Dress and Other Poems (Baseline Press, 2014). With Aqueduct Press, she has published the novels The Little Animals (2019) and The Stone Boatmen (2014), as well as the short fiction collections Two Travelers (2016) and NoFood (2014). She is a medievalist trained at the University of Toronto and Cambridge and is a Professor of English at the University of Waterloo.

Learn More About Author

Book Details

Books By Sarah Tolmie

Cover for the book titled as: All the Horses of Iceland

All the Horses of Iceland

The owner of this website has made a commitment to accessibility and inclusion, please report any problems that you encounter using the contact form on this website. This site uses the WP ADA Compliance Check plugin to enhance accessibility.