August Chalmin is a tall, pale, painfully shy young man with blood-orange hair and sun-shy eyes, who hides his awkwardness working behind the counter of the gourmet deli in London's Shepherd's Bush neighborhood. One winter day he finds a rash on his arm that resembles the crystalline frost on his windowpane. Later, snow begins to fall around his head and his fingers turn blue. Is it some rare disease that has triggered this strange reaction, or the appearance in the neighborhood of his mother's old lover Cosmo? Could it even be an allergy to the deli's new orange cheese, which seems to mock his own coloring? As Cosmo taunts him with doubts about the identity of his father, August's body changes with the seasons. Through a year's wonderful metamorphosis-through snowstorm, heat wave, eclipse, and a search for the truth-August changes into himself. August Frost is an enchanting book of extraordinary freshness and sensuality.