Tragic Shores: A Memoir of Dark Travel

'I have come to thank dark places for the light they bring to life.'

Thomas Cook has always been drawn to dark places, for the powerful emotions they evoke and for what we can learn from them. These lessons are often unexpected and sometimes profoundly intimate, but they are never straightforward.

With his wife and daughter, Cook travels across the globe in search of darkness - from Lourdes to Ghana, from San Francisco to Verdun, from the monumental, mechanised horror of Auschwitz to the intimate personal grief of a shrine to dead infants in Kamukura, Japan. Along the way he reflects on what these sites may teach us, not only about human history, but about our own personal histories.

During the course of a lifetime of traveling to some of earth's most tragic shores, from the leper colony on Molokai to ground zero at Hiroshima, he finds not darkness alone, but a light that can illuminate the darkness within each of us. Written in vivid prose, this is at once a personal memoir of exploration (both external and internal), and a strangely heartening look at the radiance that may be found at the very heart of darkness.

“Cook writes with a tender precision . . . a stunning and revelatory book that will haunt you for months to come”

Cook writes movingly, perceptively, fulfilling his assertion that "there is much to be gained where much has been lost" - Irish Times

Gripping, beautifully written, surprising and devastating - Harlan Coben

Thomas H Cook writes like a wounded angel - Peter Straub

Subtle, intelligent, full of surprises, as frighteningly mysterious as mysteries are supposed to be - Independent

Every Thomas H Cook novel is a subtle mind game ... positively haunting - New York Times

Cook remains one of the most accomplished writers in the crime/thriller genre - Financial Times

Cook's style is very quiet, reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro in its subtlety and understatedness - Historical Novel Society

One of the best at what he does - Publishers Weekly

Thomas H Cook was born in Fort Payne, Alabama. He has been a college English teacher and a book review editor, but is best known as a hugely popular crime writer. He is the winner of the Edgar Award for The Chatham School Affair and has been shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger and the Anthony Award. He lives in Cape Cod and New York City. Tragic Shores is his first non-fiction book.

'I have come to thank dark places for the light they bring to life.' Thomas Cook has always been drawn to dark places, for the powerful emotions they evoke and for what we can learn from them. These lessons are often unexpected and sometimes profoundly intimate, but they are never straightforward. With his wife and daughter, Cook travels across the globe in search of darkness - from Lourdes to Ghana, from San Francisco to Verdun, from the monumental, mechanised horror of Auschwitz to the intimate personal grief of a shrine to dead infants in Kamukura, Japan. Along the way he reflects on what these sites may teach us, not only about human history, but about our own personal histories.During the course of a lifetime of traveling to some of earth's most tragic shores, from the leper colony on Molokai to ground zero at Hiroshima, he finds not darkness alone, but a light that can illuminate the darkness within each of us. Written in vivid prose, this is at once a personal memoir of exploration (both external and internal), and a strangely heartening look at the radiance that may be found at the very heart of darkness.

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