They all lived through that terrible Christmas. The problem is, they remember it differently…

Sisters Penny and Victoria seem to have nothing in common—except perhaps envy. Penny seems blessed with a perfect work-life balance, though only she knows how underpaid and underappreciated she is, while Victoria appears to have everything she could wish for—along with a growing list of neuroses that keep her teetering on the brink of breakdown.

For years the sisters have been at odds for reasons they don’t quite understand. What they do know is that everything changed on Christmas Eve 1976, when a shocking chain of events fractured the family forever. But when a fresh tragedy strikes, it becomes clear that Victoria remembers a lot more about that horrific day than she’s letting on…

As secrets from their childhood are forced to the surface, the sisters must confront the shadows of the past together. Because, as they come to learn, as long as the truth remains bottled up, their relationships with each other, and to the past, can never heal.

Revised edition: This edition of The Bottle of Tears (also published as Let the Light Shine) includes editorial revisions.

Nick Alexander was born in 1964 in the UK. He has travelled widely and has lived and worked in the UK, the USA and France, where he resides today. The Bottle of Tears is his thirteenth fictional work. His 2015 novel The Other Son was named by Amazon as one of the best fiction titles of the year; The Photographer’s Wife, published in 2014, was a number-one hit in both the UK and France; while The Half-Life of Hannah is the fourth-bestselling independently published Kindle title of all time. Nick’s novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Turkish and Croatian. Nick lives in the South of France with his partner, three friendly cats (plus one mean one) and a few trout.