Margaret Drabble is the author of The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needle's Eye, among other novels. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.

The story of an upper-middle-class unwed mother in 1960s London, from a novelist who is "often as meticulous as Jane Austen and as deadly as Evelyn Waugh" (Los Angeles Times).

In a newly swinging London, Rosamund Stacey indulges in a premarital sexual encounter-and soon thereafter finds herself pregnant. Despite her fierce independence and academic brilliance, Rosamund is in fact naïve and unworldly, and the choices before her are terrifying.

But in the perfection and helplessness of her baby she finds an unconditional love she has never known before-and as she navigates a situation still considered scandalous in her circles, she may discover that motherhood and independence need not be mutually exclusive.

From "one of Britain's most dazzling writers," the award-winning author of The Dark Flood Rises, The Millstone captures both a moment in history when women's lives were changing dramatically and the timeless truths of the female experience (The New York Times Book Review).