The Man Who Rained - Tapa dura

From the Costa Prize shortlisted-author of The Girl with Glass Feet comes another magical novel of love, discovery and nature. The Man Who Rained is a work of lyrical, mercurial magic and imagination, a modern-day fable about the elements of love. When Elsa's father is killed in a tornado, all she wants is to escape - from New York, her job, her boyfriend - to somewhere new, anonymous, set apart. For some years she has been haunted by a sight once seen from an aeroplane: a tiny, isolated settlement called Thunderstown. Thunderstown has received many a pilgrim, and young Elsa becomes its latest - drawn to this weather-ravaged backwater, this place rendered otherworldly by the superstitions of its denizens. In Thunderstown, they say, the weather can come to life and when Elsa meets Finn Munro, an outcast living in the mountains above the town, she wonders whether she has witnessed just that. For Finn has an incredible secret: he has a thunderstorm inside of him. Not everyone in town wants happiness for Elsa and Finn. As events turn against them, can they weather the tempest - can they survive at all?

Ali Shaw grew up in Dorset and graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in English Literature. He has since worked as a bookseller and at Oxford's Bodleian Library. His first novel, The Girl with Glass Feet, was a huge commercial and critical success, won the Desmond Elliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa First Book Award. He is currently at work on his third novel.