Excerpt from The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It sounded plausible. But if it was true, then why leave this lost sheep in the lurch? It wasn't like Bea to leave anybody stranded.

He turned toward her darkened face again, and was alarmed to see teardrops twinkling on her jaw and in the corners of her mouth.

"Peter . . ." she said.

He took one hand off the steering wheel again, this time to squeeze her shoulder. Suspended over the highway up ahead was a sign with a symbol of an aeroplane on it.

"Peter, this is our last chance."

"Last chance?"

"To make love."

The indicator lights flashed gently and went tick, tick, tick, as he eased the car into the airport lane. The words "make love" bumbled against his brain, trying to get in, even though there was no room in there. He almost said, "You're joking." But, even though she had a fine sense of humor and loved to laugh, she never joked about things that mattered.

As he drove on, the sense that they were not on the same page—that they needed different things at this crucial time—entered the car like a discomfiting presence. He'd thought—he'd felt—that yesterday morning had been their proper leavetaking, and that this trip to the airport was just . . . a postscript, almost. Yesterday morning had been so right. They'd finally worked their way to the bottom of their "To-Do" list. His bag was already packed. Bea had the day off work, they'd slept like logs, they'd woken up to brilliant sunshine warming the yellow duvet of their bed. Joshua the cat had been lying in a comical pose at their feet; they'd nudged him off and made love, without speaking, slowly and with great tenderness. Afterward, Joshua had jumped back on the bed and tentatively laid one forepaw on Peter's naked shin, as if to say, Don't go; I will hold you here. It was a poignant moment, expressing the situation better than language could have, or perhaps it was just that the exotic cuteness of the cat put a protective furry layer over the raw human pain, making it endurable. Whatever. It was perfection. They'd lain there listening to Joshua's throaty purr, enfolded in each other's arms, their sweat evaporating in the sun, their heart-rates gradually reverting to normal.

"One more time," she said to him now, above the engine noise on a dark motorway on the way to the plane that would take him to America and beyond.

He consulted the digital clock on the dashboard. He was supposed to be at the check-in counter in two hours; they were about fifteen minutes from the airport.

"You're wonderful," he said. Perhaps if he pronounced the words in exactly the right way, she might get the message that they shouldn't try to improve on yesterday, that they should just leave it at that.

"I don't want to be wonderful," she said. "I want you inside me."

He drove for a few seconds in silence, adjusting quickly to the circumstances. Prompt adjustment to changed circumstances was another thing they had in common.

"There are lots of those horrible corporate hotels right near the airport," he said. "We could rent a room just for an hour." He regretted the "horrible" bit; it sounded as though he was trying to dissuade her while pretending not to. He only meant that the hotels were the sort they both avoided if they possibly could.

"Just find a quiet lay-by,"

she said. "We can do it in the car."

"Crisis!" he said, and they both laughed. Crisis was the word he'd trained himself to say instead of Christ, when he'd first become a Christian. The two words were close enough in sound for him to be able to defuse a blasphemy when it was already half out of his mouth.

"I mean it," she said. "Anywhere will do. Just don't park in a place where another car's likely to run into the back of us."

Excerpted from The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. Copyright © 2014 by Michel Faber. Excerpted by permission of Hogarth Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.