Asta's Book

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Asta's Book
Author Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Crime / Mystery novel
Publisher Viking
Publication date March 25 1993
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) & Audiobook
Pages 448 (paperback)
ISBN ISBN 0140176616
Preceded by King Solomon's Carpet
Followed by No Night is Too Long

Asta's Book is a 1993 novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, written under the name Barbara Vine. It was published in the USA under the title Anna's Book.

[edit] Plot summary

This work is set in 1905. Asta and her husband Rasmus have come to east London from Denmark with their two sons. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary. These diaries, published over seventy years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal, for they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder, to the quest for a missing child and to the enigma surrounding Asta's daughter, Swanny. It falls to Asta's granddaughter Ann to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.