PODCAST: Jessica Mansour-Nahra on Her Debut, Pregnancy and Creativity

When 37-year-old Leila suffers a health tragedy, she doesn't recover as quickly as she expected. Her partner, James, suggests a year away from the city - they'll stay on his family farm, where the wide, open spaces and clean country air will help her come to terms with her grief.

But the property is remote and the house oppressive. Leila is disturbed by strange noises, fleeting visions and intrusive dreams. James worries that her medication is causing hallucinations.

As Leila's isolation grows amid the haunted landscape, so does her suspicion that she isn't the first woman James has relocated to the farm. Is what she's experiencing real? Or is it all in her head?

Daniel believed that his parents were enjoying a peaceful retirement on a remote farm in Sweden. But with a single phone call, everything changes.Your mother…she’s not well, his father tells him. She’s been imagining things – terrible, terrible things. She’s had a psychotic breakdown, and been committed to a mental hospital.Before Daniel can board a plane to Sweden, his mother calls: Everything that man has told you is a lie. I’m not mad… I need the police… Meet me at Heathrow.Caught between his parents, and unsure of who to believe or trust, Daniel becomes his mother’s unwilling judge and jury as she tells him an urgent tale of secrets, of lies, of a crime and a conspiracy that implicates his own father. “It is so good, in fact, that you will finish it quickly and then be jealous of anyone who hasn’t read it yet.” - The Independent“An absorbing, unsettling, multilayered novel…beautifully crafted, its effect enhanced by the author’s admission that his own family faced a similar experience.” - The Times “This is a neatly plotted book full of stories within stories, which gradually unravel to confound our expectations.” - The Guardian "Smith does an expert job of putting readers into the narrator's uncomfortable shoes." - New York Post"Is there anything more innerving than the realization that you can't trust your own mother? Maybe the realization that you can't trust your father either. That's the killer premise of The Farm." - New York Times Book Review