A name is only a kind of armour.
Four years of exile in lawless Corven Tar have handed the disgraced nobleman Florian Ashmore dozens, each one easier to wear than his own.
When he's sent home a year early on someone else's business, home proves its own kind of sentence: a society that never changes, a brother he no longer recognises, a mother who no longer recognises him, a vice he's already survived once. And, worst of all, a man who infuriatingly refuses to accept a single lie Florian offers him.
For someone who has spent his life spreading rumours about himself, being seen is a violence of its own. And as the debts of his old life close in, Florian will have to decide whether the self he built to survive is worth keeping, now that someone has finally asked for the real one.
Earthy, Bitter, Sweet is a novel about the names we wear to survive, the vices that outlast our willpower, and the terrible, ordinary courage it takes to be known and loved anyway.