Wonderful Year

Two English exiles in Paris, Martin Overshaw and Corinna Hastings, have built comfortable lives of polite boredom until a mysterious prophet appears in their midst. Fortinbras, the so-called Merchant of Happiness, sees something in them they cannot see in themselves: a future worth living for. His prediction compels them to abandon their grey routines and set out on a journey through France that will transform everything they thought they knew about chance, destiny, and joy. What begins as an escapade populated by eccentric strangers and sunlit French villages gradually darkens as the shadow of 1914 falls across Europe. Locke captures that delicate moment before everything changed, a world still capable of laughter and wonder yet already sensing the approaching storm. This is a novel about seizing life before it seizes you, told with wit, warmth, and an aching tenderness for a civilization on the edge of the abyss. It will appeal to readers who crave adventure with philosophical teeth, romantic comedies that don't shy from the tragic, and anyone who longs for a vanished Europe that still believed in happiness.