Ben and Helen Armstead have reached breaking point and it takes one afternoon - and a single act of recklessness - for Ben to deal the final blow to their marriage, spectacularly demolishing everything they built together.
Helen and her teenage daughter Sara leave for Manhattan where Helen takes a job in PR - her first in many years - and discovers she has a gift for spinning crises into second chances. But can she apply her professional talent to her personal life?
A Thousand Pardons is an elegant, audacious, gripping and sharply observed novel about a marriage in ruins and a family in crisis; about the limits of self-invention and the seduction of self-destruction.
Read MoreA Thousand Pardons is that rare thing: a genuine literary thriller. Eerily suspenseful and packed with dramatic event, it also offers a trenchant, hilarious portrait of our collective longing for authenticity in these over-mediated times.Guilt, redemption and the American dream of starting afresh are Pulitzer-Prize nominee Jonathan Dee's themes in this thoroughly enjoyable comic tale. - Daily MailThe American novelist who has his finger on the pulse. - BBC Front RowDeliciously readable. - Irish IndependentSlickly written and great entertainment. - Evening StandardPart relationship drama, part thriller, this is one of our favourite books of the year so far. - Bella...shrewdly observed and compulsively readable. - Literary ReviewWith his sixth novel, Pulitzer finalist Dee has written a page turner without sacrificing a smidgen of psychological insight. What a triumph. - Kirkus (Starred Review)