`Effortlessly enjoyable . . . an emotionally rewarding novel so succulent with detail that you can almost feel the Tripoli sand storms whipping across your face` Daily Mail The Fourth Shore: the sliver of fertile land along the Tripoli coast, the `lost` territory Mussolini promised to reclaim for Italy. Which is how, in 1929, seventeen-year-old Liliana Cattaneo arrives there from Rome on a ship filled with eager colonists to join her brother and his new wife.Liliana is sure she was on the brink of a great adventure, but what awaits her is not the Mediterranean idyll of cocktail parties, smart dances, dashing officers and romantic intrigues she had imagined. Instead she finds a world of persecution, violence, repression, corruption and deceptions both great and small. A child of fascist Italy, blown about by the winds of fascism and Catholicism, Liliana becomes enmeshed in a dark liaison which has terrible consequences both for her and those she loves most. The Fourth Shore is the engrossing and intensely poignant story of Liliana`s journey from Rome to Tripoli to a north London suburb where, as plain Lily Jones, she begins to uncover a secret she has buried so deeply that even she is far from certain what it is.Praise for Early One Morning by Virginia Baily:`As gripping as any thriller...really, really good` Daily Mail`A big, generous and absorbing piece of storytelling` Samantha Harvey, Guardian`A real treat` Philip Hensher, Observer`Wonderful` Tessa Hadley