<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES </i>BESTSELLER • <i>TODAY</i> SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK</b><br><br><i>Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.</i><br><br>From Nancy Horan, <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Loving Frank,</i> comes her much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny.<br> <br> At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets a lively Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who falls instantly in love with the earthy, independent, and opinionated “belle Americaine.”<br> <br> Fanny does not immediately take to the slender young lawyer who longs to devote his life to writing—and who would eventually pen such classics as <i>Treasure Island </i>and <i>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i>. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson’s charms, and the two begin a fierce love affair—marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness—that spans the decades and the globe. The shared life of these two strong-willed individuals unfolds into an adventure as impassioned and unpredictable as any of Stevenson’s own unforgettable tales.<br><br><b>Praise for <i>Under the Wide and Starry Sky</i></b><br> <br>“A richly imagined [novel] of love, laughter, pain and sacrifice . . . <i>Under the Wide and Starry Sky</i> is a dual portrait, with Louis and Fanny sharing the limelight in the best spirit of teamwork—a romantic partnership.”<b>—<i>USA Today</i></b><br> <br> “Powerful . . . flawless . . . a perfect example of what a man and a woman will do for love, and what they can accomplish when it’s meant to be.”<b>—<i>Fort Worth Star-Telegram</i></b><br> <br> “Spectacular . . . an exhilarating epic about a free-spirited couple who traveled the world yet found home only in one another.”<b>—<i>Booklist</i> (starred review)</b><br> <br> “Horan’s prose is gorgeous enough to keep a reader transfixed, even if the story itself weren’t so compelling. I kept re-reading passages just to savor the exquisite wordplay. . . . Few writers are as masterful as she is at blending carefully researched history with the novelist’s art.”<b>—<i>The Dallas Morning News</i></b><br> <br> “A classic artistic bildungsroman and a retort to the genre, a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance.”<b><i>—The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br> <br> “Nancy Horan has done it again, capturing the entwined lives of Fanny Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson so uncannily, it reads like truth.”<b>—Sarah Blake, author of <i>The Postmistress</i></b><br> <br> “Horan has a distinct knack for evoking the rich, complicated lives of long-gone artists and the women who inspired them.”<b>—<i>Entertainment Weekly</i></b>