The Luminaries (Booker Prize Winner) by Eleanor Catton

Beautifully imagined and capturing an entire era of history, The Luminaries is bold, clever, tense and full of so many masterfully rendered story elements that the pages keep turning. From the surface entertainment to the meaningful depths, this is a tale that will stick with you.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize, this "expertly written, perfectly constructed" bestseller (The Guardian) is now a Starz miniseries.  

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand's booming gold rush. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of 12 local men who have met in secret to discuss a series of unexplained events: a wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky.

Richly evoking a mid-nineteenth-century world of shipping, banking, and gold rush boom and bust, The Luminaries is at once a fiendishly clever ghost story, a gripping page-turner, and a thrilling novelistic achievement. It richly confirms that Eleanor Catton is one of the brightest stars in the international literary firmament.