As long as humans have known about fire—its powers of comfort and protection, or of danger and destruction—they have used it to communicate. By day, there were smoke signals, from the beacon network along the Great Wall of China to the tower of the Vatican to Native Americans’ smoke morse code in the Wild West. By night, there were signal fires, lit to warn of the approach of an enemy or send a call to arms. Dani Shapiro's new novel begins with a crash but also contemplation. Let's ask the author to read from the very beginning of her new novel, "Signal Fires." For a century, the memory of fire beacons in England was all but lost to time. In the 1800s and early 1900s, the networks eroded, the maps were mostly forgotten. A renewed interest flared up with archaeological pursuits of the twentieth century, and today, beacons nod to eternal flames, honoring landmark occasions: Queen Elizabeth’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, the 400th anniversary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the hundred-year anniversary of the end of the First World War. Just as on Independence Day in the U.S., and on Bastille Day in France, people who could not be more divided will be connected for some bright, firelit minutes, when fireworks explode above them. From the beloved author of INHERITANCE: "a haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets” (Meg Wolitzer, author of THE INTERESTINGS).

In the week of the 26 October, fires lit up across the UK with storytellers and audiences sharing in one of the original forms of theatre. From spectacular bonfires to digital blazes; the nation’s leading touring theatre companies presented a series of theatrical events at locations across the UK in celebration of our fundamental need to tell stories. An ancient majestic oak stands beneath the stars on Division Street. And under the tree sits Ben Wilf, a retired doctor, and ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant, lonely boy who is pointing out his favorite constellations. Waldo doesn’t realize it but he and Ben have met before. And they will again, and again. Across time and space, and shared destiny.

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More than a thousand bonfire beacons raged across the Commonwealth in solidarity and celebration of her majesty’s ninetieth: In church towers, on hilltops, across the United Kingdom, on the peak of Scotland’s Ben Nevis, Snowdonia in Wales and Slieve Donard in Northern Ireland, fires connected a nation by sight.

In a fascinating work of popular science, Gregg explores the enormous gulf between how humans and other animals experience the world. While we perceive our cognitive development and capacity for reasoning as advantages, Gregg persuasively argues that not only do they make us less happy, but can also lead to horrific acts such as genocide. Accessible and insightful, it’s a thought-provoking read. Love MarriageFuel commissioned international and local writers, Devon’s own Alice Oswald alongside Kim Scott from Australia, Kiki Katese from Rwanda, and Will Power from the USA – to respond to the duality of fire, creating warmth and community as well as danger and destruction, as a symbol for this time. Signal Fire (n): a fire or light set up in a prominent position as a warning, signal, or celebration. Shapiro’s great gift as an author is her ability to deliver powerful emotion that never strays into schmaltz

On the way home from a party, 15-year-old Theo Wilf crashes his parents’ car, killing one of the passengers. His sister, Sarah, claims she was driving to protect her brother, and over the following 30 years, their mutual guilt affects the siblings in different ways. Meanwhile, their father befriends a neglected but intellectually prodigious boy obsessed with the cosmos. Shapiro’s tender and philosophical novel oscillates between timeframes and perspectives, exploring loneliness, penitence and the connectedness of human experience. If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity The “fiery herald flew,” Macaulay rhymed, “roused the shepherds of Stonehenge, the rangers of Beaulieu” to crush the Spanish fleet. And after the enemy was defeated, they lit fires for another purpose: to celebrate. Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken.

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Urgent and compassionate, SIGNAL FIRES is a magical story for our times, a literary tour de force by a masterful storyteller at the height of her powers. It's a luminous meditation on family, memory and the healing power of interconnectedness. Nineteenth-century English poet Thomas Babington Macaulay recounted their critical role in his fragment “The Armada,” about the night in August 1588 when Spain’s King Phillip sailed a massive war fleet on England. That night was as bright as day, Macaulay wrote, the entire country lit by beacon fires at every visible point. In light of the current crisis, the signal fires will create beacons across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland warning of the threat the industry continues to face while celebrating the extraordinary vibrancy of touring theatre and the freelancers they engage. Stretching across four nations, this festival of fires will connect audiences, freelance artists and touring companies together in a communal, national act of storytelling. Orange dots sparkled along the rim of the dark stretches between us and the horizon. We could see the fires burning in three other villages from here. Then four. Then six. Each of those villages could see a number of other fires, farther afield.