Neuroscientist Dr Yvonne Churcher has problems in the world beyond her lab. One of her students, James, a dangerously attractive anti-science protestor, has set out to challenge her entire philosophy about how the brain works. His friend, Gareth, a brilliant, unstable computer genius, is obsessed with the biochemical basis of memory. When he tries to persuade Yvonne to get involved with a plan to stimulate memory artificially, it sets off a chain of events involving unscrupulous biotech companies, stolen brain-mapping data and a strange brand of eco-terrorism.

A Box of Birds is both a pacy literary thriller set in a near-future world of experimental brain research, and a compelling love story between a neuroscientist and an animal rights campaigner. It brilliant dramatizes the clash between two of the predominant philosophical positions of our age: the materialist view that science has all the answers and that 'we' are nothing more than bundles of nerves and chemical reactions, and the Freud-inspired position that underpins the culture of psychotherapy: that the stories we tell about ourselves and our pasts have the capacity to change our future. Does neuroscience really change our understanding of who we are? Or are we all at the mercy of our own need to make coherent stories?

'Arrestingly good prose - A thought-provoking novel that wrestles with the fundamentals of human nature.' Financial Times 'The plot, which flies past at genuine 'page turner' pace, involves a race to map the (fictional) Lorenzo Circuit, 'the deep root-system of the self - the basis of memory, emotion and consciousness in the human brain' - Fernyhough may have ended my face-off with fiction, as I realised - that [science and fiction] need not be mutually exclusive. We can, of course, learn about our world while our head's in an imagined one, just as our experience informs our writing. 'Stories are truth', he writes. 'Stories are the truest truth'. I'm grateful for the siren warnings from the storytelling machine that is Charles Fernyhough.' The Psychologist 'A pleasantly sardonic narrator - There is - a certain edgy propulsion to the story, and the reveal of what is really going on in the bowels of Sansom's research centre is deliciously horrible and deftly understated.' Guardian 'Part love story, part race against time to beat the baddies, Fernyhough can certainly write.' Daily Mail "This is both a novel of ideas and a pacey thriller. Exhilarating, thought-provoking and well worth the wait." - Andrew Crumey "A thrilling plot and wonderfully constructed characters - a serious novel and a great read." - Sara Maitland

Charles Fernyhough is a writer and psychologist. The Baby in the Mirror, his book about his daughter’s psychological development, was translated into seven languages. His first novel, The Auctioneer, was widely praised, as was his 2012 non-fiction book on the new science of memory, Pieces of Light. He is a Reader in Psychology at Durham University and has written for the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Sunday Telegraph.