 Recorded books and one-click digital present A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantell One-Click Digital provides free audiobook downloads in partnership with thousands of public libraries. To see if One-Click Digital's extensive catalog is available to you, visit your library's website. The author opens with two epigraphs. The first is a quote from The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin. We are not here concerned with hopes and fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. The second quote that begins this novel is from Job, chapter 4, verse 7. Consider what innocent ever perished, or where have their righteous been destroyed? And now, A Change of Climate. 1970. Sad Cases, Good Souls. One day when Kit was ten years old, a visitor cut her wrists in the kitchen. She was just beginning on this cold, difficult form of death when Kit came in to get a glass of milk. The woman, Joan, was sixty years old and wore a polyester dress from a charity shop. A house-wifely type. She had chosen to drip her blood into the kitchen sink. When Kit touched her on the elbow, she threw down the knife onto the draining board and attempted with her good hand to cover Kit's eyes. By this stage in her life, Kit was not much surprised by anything. As she ducked under the woman's arm, she thought, that's our bread knife, if you don't mind. But she said, you shouldn't be doing that, Joan. Why don't you come away from the sink? Why don't you sit down on this chair and I'll get the first aid kit? The woman allowed herself to be led to a chair at the kitchen table. Kit pulled a clean tea-tile out of a drawer and wrapped it around Joan's wrist. The towel was a checked one, red and white. Joan's reluctant blood seeped black against the cloth. Her cuts were light, early, indecisive. The practice cuts. Just wiggle your fingers, Kit said. Make sure you haven't done any damage. The woman looked down at her hand and dry-eyed dread, while the child scrambled on a stool and brought down a box from a cupboard. Lucky it's half-term, Kit said, unpacking the bandages and the round-ended scissors. Otherwise I wouldn't have been here. I was upstairs, I was reading a book. It's called Children in the New Forest. Have you read it? It's about a family like us. Sample complete. Ready to continue?