He was relieved to be again among the Russians. Nothing to do with his head, or even his heart, but in his soul . . .

Set between London and St. Petersburg, Self Help is the absorbing story of a family - half-English, half-Russian - with many secrets and a dark, disturbed history.

Masha Glover returns home from exile, where she dies suddenly and alone. Her twins, Gabriel and Isabella, must come together and confront the contorted legacy of the past in the shape of their estranged, malevolent father, Nicholas, and the pitiless stranger, Arkady Artamenkov.

Self Help is a beautifully written novel, alive with feeling, intelligence and dark humour, and always directly engaged with the modern world. In addressing the most elemental of contradictions - human nature and nurture; honesty and deception; what it means to live with integrity when so much is so easily discredited - it emerges as that rarest of discoveries: a truly gripping story.