<b>An imaginative and audacious historical novel from the best-selling author of <i>Love Objects</i> and <i>An Isolated Incident</i>.</b><br/><br/><b>'<i>Rapture </i>is astonishing - a scorching vision of a book. Drawing on history, legend, speculation and gossip, Maguire's medieval girl-Pope story is made of many things: flesh and earth and blood; ambition and abnegation; rage and transcendence, all pouring into this pagan, biblical, strange and mighty work from an imagination in soaring flight.' - Charlotte Wood, author of <i>Stone Yard Devotional</i><br/><br/>'In <i>Rapture</i>, Maguire has performed the dazzling feat of making the earthly feel miraculous and the heavenly feel intimate. This glorious novel both burns and sings.' - Fiona McFarlane, author of <i>The Sun Walks Down</i></b><br/><br/><b>'Profound, frightening and extraordinarily beautiful.' - Evie Wyld, author of<i> The Bass Rock</i></b><br/><br/>The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and devote her life to the study she is denied as a woman.<br/><br/>So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of the revered Fulda monastery, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, Agnes (as John) dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge and wisdom and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful-and deadly-currency.<br/><br/>And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known-and loved.<br/><br/><b>Praise for <i>Rapture</i>:</b><br/><br/>'This book is so alive and real I was totally hooked from the start. It captures both the grit of daily human life and the soaring ecstasies of the eternal burning spirit. Another masterpiece from Maguire.' -<b> Bri Lee, author of <i>The Work</i></b><br/><br/>'<i>Rapture </i>is the perfect title for this wonderful, original story of devotion, passion and purpose. I felt myself transported, seamlessly, to another time, long ago, with Agnes, the novel's determined protagonist, as my guide. I loved her.' - <b>Sofie Laguna, author of <i>Infinite Splendours</i></b><br/><br/>'An enthralling evocation of a world in turmoil, threaded through by the life of a singular, brilliant woman. The wonder of <i>Rapture </i>is that Maguire makes a time more than a thousand years distant feel so vivid and its concerns so alive. Agnes's choices are enduring: How do you become your truest self; what might you sacrifice along the way? This richly inhabited novel is as audacious and unwavering as Agnes herself.' - <b>Lucy Treloar, author of<i> Days of Innocence and Wonder</i></b><br/><br/>'A strange and magnificent vision of a novel: in Agnes, Maguire embodies a ferocity of both the mind and body, ambition and humility, wisdom, desire, sacrifice, grace and a refusal to follow the path laid down for her. Maguire's language and storytelling soars. I was transfixed. Maguire effortlessly transitions to deeply researched and utterly compelling historical fiction in the style of Lauren Groff, Hannah Kent, Anthony Doerr and Pip Williams.' -<b> Kate Mildenhall, author of <i>The Hummingbird Effect</i></b>