A tender and sharply observant debut novel about a missing young girl--winner of the Costa First Novel Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and "The Guardian" First Book AwardIn the 1980s, Kate Meaney--"Top Secret" notebook and toy monkey in tow--is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing "suspects" and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friendship with Adrian, the son of a local shopkeeper. But when this curious, independent-spirited young girl disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion and is hounded out of his home by the press. Then, in 2003, Adrian's sister Lisa--stuck in a dead-end relationship--is working as a manager at Your Music, a discount record store. Every day she tears her hair out at the outrageous behavior of her customers and colleagues. But along with a security guard, Kurt, she becomes entranced by the little girl glimpsed on the mall's surveillance cameras. As their after-hours friendship intensifies, Lisa and Kurt investigate how these sightings might be connected to the unsettling history of Green Oaks itself. Written with warmth and wit, "What Was Lost" is a haunting debut from an incredible new talent.

凱瑟琳·歐弗林，一九七0年生。創作此書時，凱瑟琳還是一名普通的郵遞員，但她一直希望自己寫的書有朝一日能齣版，於是不斷給各齣版商郵寄手稿。稿子不停地被退迴，但凱瑟琳並不氣餒，繼續四處郵遞自己的理想。她的堅信終於得到瞭證明：《失物》不僅擺在瞭書攤上，獲得二00七年著名的科茨塔圖書奬，甚至一路突圍，闖進瞭英國最權威的布剋奬和橘子奬最終提名，一時成為英國文壇佳話。