Vesper Flights

Thanks to the runaway breakout success of H is for Hawk, household name Macdonald is now regarded as one of our preeminent nature writers and has a semi-regular column in the New York Times Magazine in which she explores the human relationship to the natural world. Vesper Flights springs from some of these best-loved essays along with newly written ones on a wide range of topics from human migration to the solar eclipse, to Macdonald's own childhood in England. One of our most critical and commercially successful memoirs ever, New York Times Bestseller H is for Hawk sold over 350,000 copies across all formats and was winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, the Costa Book Award, and the Prix due Meilleur Livre Etranger in France; was finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and was a top 10 book of the year for the NYT and O Magazine. H is for Hawk was a Best Book of the Year for Time, NPR, Vogue, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Star Tribune, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, and Book Riot. Macdonald is in constant demand around the world to talk about her writing and her journalism has appeared in countless newspapers and magazines globally. This is the much anticipated first book in an exciting two book deal following Hawk. We expect a similar level of attention for Vesper Flights. Vesper Flights is named for the ornithological phenomenon in which crowds of airborne swifts that have flown all day at lower levels ascend, calling, into the evening skies to spend the night sleeping at high altitudes before descending again at dawn. We will publish simultaneously with Jonathan Cape in the UK. Other international publishers include : Penguin Canada, Anagrama (Spain), De Bezige Bij (Netherlands), Gummerus (Finland), Hanser (Germany), Einaudi (Italy), and Cappelen Damm (Norway). Grove will send Helen MacDonald on a twelve-city tour with significant media attention in September of 2020.