{"product_id":"9780374709327","title":"The Heart Broke In: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom James Meek, the award-winning author of the international bestseller \u003ci\u003eThe People's Act of Love\u003c\/i\u003e, comes a rich and intricate novel about everything that matters to us now: children, celebrity, secrets and shame, the quest for youth, loyalty and betrayal, falls from grace, acts of terror, and the wonderful, terrible inescapability of family.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRitchie Shepherd, an aging pop star and a producer of a reality show for teen talent, is starting to trip over his own lies. Maybe filming a documentary about his father, Captain Shepherd, a British soldier executed by Northern Irish guerrillas, will redeem him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis sister, Bec, is getting closer and closer to a vaccine for malaria. When she's not in Tanzania harvesting field samples, she's peering through a microscope at her own blood to chart the risky treatment she's testing on herself. She's as addicted to honesty as Ritchie is to trickery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eVal Oatman is the editor of a powerful tabloid newspaper. The self-appointed conscience of the nation, scourge of hypocrites and cheats, he believes he will marry beautiful Bec.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlex Comrie, a gene therapist (and formerly the drummer in Ritchie's band), is battling his mortally ill uncle, a brilliant and domineering scientist, over whether Alex might actually have discovered a cure for aging. Alex, too, believes he will marry Bec.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eColum O'Donabháin has just been released from prison, having served a twenty-five-year sentence for putting a gun to Captain Shepherd's head when he refused to give up an informer. He now writes poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTheir stories meet and tangle in this bighearted epic that is also shrewd, starkly funny, and utterly of the moment. \u003ci\u003eThe Heart Broke In \u003c\/i\u003eis fiction with the reverberating resonance of truth.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47077662490864,"sku":"9780374709327","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780374709327_p0.jpg?v=1769915143","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780374709327","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}