A Spark of Light

A lone gunman walks into a women's health clinic in Mississippi and takes everyone inside hostage: patients, doctors, a protester, and a teenage girl whose father turns out to be the police negotiator outside. Jodi Picoult then does something bold with the clock, telling the day backwards hour by hour, so that each chapter strips away another layer of how these people came to be in that room and what they believed when they walked through the door.

It is a novel about abortion that refuses easy sides, giving voice to people with very different convictions and testing every one of them under pressure. A number one Sunday Times bestseller, it has all of Picoult's careful research and moral seriousness. For readers who like fiction that argues with itself, and who are happy to be left thinking long after the final hour.