-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Beatrice Colin's The Glass House is a gorgeously transporting novel filled with turn-of-the-century detail and lush blooms, about two women from vastly different worlds.
Scotland, 1912. Antonia McCulloch's life hasn't gone the way she planned. She and her husband, Malcolm, have drifted apart; her burgeoning art career came to nothing; and when she looks in the mirror, she sees disappointment. But at least she will always have Balmarra, her family's grand Scottish estate, and its exquisite glass house, filled with exotic plants that can take her far away.
When her estranged brother's wife, Cicely Pick, arrives unannounced, with her young daughter and enough trunks to last the summer, Antonia is instantly suspicious. What besides an inheritance dispute could have brought her glamorous sister-in-law all the way from India? Still, Cicely introduces excitement and intrigue into Antonia's life, and, as they get to know one another, Antonia realizes that Cicely has her own burdens to bear. Slowly, a fragile friendship grows between them. But when the secrets each are keeping become too explosive to conceal, the truth threatens their uneasy balance and the course of their entire lives.
"[A]lluring... Colin's lyrical depictions of early-20th-century India and Scotland provide an immersive view of the characters' experiences, particularly in Cicely's view of damp, dank Glasgow after arriving from India...and family secrets add to the intrigue over the inheritance of Balmarra. Colin's final work is a fine achievement." - Publishers Weekly
"Descriptions of the world beyond Balmarra, including lush Eastern landscapes and the rare subjects of botanical quests and obsessions, are complemented by eloquent descriptions of the beauty of the Scottish countryside and coastline...Colin's meandering tale has room for surprises, suspense, and soul-searching in its journey toward a cinematic conclusion." - Kirkus Reviews
"Colin's lovely storytelling conveys the stark reality of women's lives in the post-Victorian era. While vastly different in personality and temperament, Antonia and Cicely are similarly pigeonholed into roles not of their choosing, but the result of decisions made by the men in their lives. For fans of historical and women's fiction." - Library Journal
This information about The Glass House was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Beatrice Colin was a novelist based in Glasgow. The Glimmer Palace (2008), a novel set in Berlin in the early 20th century, was translated into eight languages, was a Richard and Judy pick, and was short-listed for several major awards. Colin also wrote radio plays and adaptations for BBC Radio 4.
If you liked The Glass House, try these:
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
by Kiran Desai
Published 2026
A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss.
by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Published 2025
A gorgeously written and irresistibly intimate queer novel that follows one family across four generations to explore legacy and identity in all its forms.
by Patti Callahan. Henry
Published 2023
When a woman discovers a rare book that has connections to her past, long-held secrets about her missing sister and their childhood spent in the English countryside during World War II are revealed.
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
