Currently Reading: A early proof digital copy of Dangerous: A Lord Byron Mystery by Essie Fox

 

About the Author

Essie Fox was born and raised in rural Herefordshire, which inspires much of her writing. After studying English Literature at Sheffield University, she moved to London where she worked for the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, then the book publishers George Allen & Unwin – before becoming self-employed in the world of art and design. Always an avid reader, Essie now spends her time writing historical gothic novels. Her debut, The Somnambulist, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards, and featured on Channel 4’s TV Book Club. The Last Days of Leda Grey, set in the early years of silent film, was selected as The Times Historical Book of the Month. Her latest novel, The Fascination is based in Victorian country fairgrounds, the glamour of the London theatres, and an Oxford Street museum full of morbid curiosities. Essie is also the creator of the popular blog: The Virtual Victorian. She has lectured on this era at the V&A, and the National Gallery in London.

About the Book

When fiction is fatal…

Living in exile in Venice, the disgraced Lord Byron revels in the freedoms of the city

But when he is associated with the deaths of local women, found with wounds to their throats, and then a novel called The Vampyre is published under his name, rumours begin to spread that Byron may be the murderer…

As events escalate and tensions rise – and his own life is endangered, as well as those he holds most dear – Byron is forced to play detective, to discover who is really behind these heinous crimes. Meanwhile, the scandals of his own infamous past come back to haunt him…

Rich in gothic atmosphere and drawing on real events and characters from Byron’s life, Dangerous is a riveting, dazzling historical thriller, as decadent, dark and seductive as the poet himself…

• Publisher: Orenda Books (April 24, 2025)
• Length: 300 pages
• ISBN13: 9781916788442

For more information about the author  and all her books, Orenda Books

Interview with Graham Watson, author of The Invention of Charlotte Bronte

Graham Watson’s debut biography, The Invention of Charlotte Bronte blows the lid off of the myths that surround Charlotte Bronte’s life still today and during her lifetime. 

Published just six months ago, this debut biography has already been chosen as book of the year and best book for Christmas. I guess I can tell you that it’s also my book of the year as well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  

Graham Watson is a specialist in the Brontës and Elizabeth Gaskell, and he is currently researching Victorian literary identities at the University of Glasgow. He has published a number of papers in Brontë Studies and has recently joined the journal’s peer-review board. This is his first book. Graham lives in Glasgow.

INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM WATSON 

1) Have you always wanted to be a writer and published author? 

 

Yes, always. Writing has been essential since I was a child and when I grew up that eventually turned into work: I was an editor, book reviewer and a copywriter at various times but also had to do less literary work like working in shops and offices. The road to writing and being published is rarely straight. 

 

2) How did you come to focus on Charlotte Bronte and those specific years of her life (1850-1855)? 

 

Charlotte Brontë’s last five years are given comparatively little space in other biographies. I’vefound once biographers have covered the deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne they seem to lose interest in Charlotte on her own and gloss over everything 1850-55 to hasten towards writing about her death, despite it being the era when the lives of the Brontë family became a story that reached the outside world. My book extends beyond that era into the years immediately afterwards when Elizabeth Gaskell was researching and writing her Life of Charlotte Brontë and how the media scandal itcaused turned Charlotte into a legend.

 

3) Why focus specifically on Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriett Martineau and Ellen Nussey? Did your research point to them or was it something else? 

 

My research led me in their direction. I wanted to show the living Charlotte Brontë and the mythic version, and how people who’d known her personally struggled to interact with both the living woman and her legend.Despite everyone having an opinion on her, few could agree on who she had been.

When Charlotte’s father asked Gaskell to write her lifeshe assumed he and Charlotte’s widower Arthur Bell Nicholls would be her main sources. But they refused to let her see Charlotte’s personal letters and were cagey and unreliable. Once she turned to Charlotte’s best friend, Ellen Nussey, she heard a very different take on Charlotte’s life. Harriet Martineau was a published writer who had been friends with both Charlotte and Elizabeth Gaskell but had mixed feelings about Charlotte as she’d fallen out with her by the time of her death. She became more hostile to Charlotte’s memory, thinking Charlotte had been a self-dramatizing fantasist until something was revealed to her that made her reconsider everything that she had ever thought about her. 

 

4) As you were researching and writing this book, was there someone who stood out to you or surprised you the most and why? 

 

What I discovered about George Smith, Charlotte’s publisher came as a surprise. I had always thought of him the way history has presented him to us, as a Prince Charming of publishing who changed Charlotte’s life and may even have had a romantic interest in her. None of that was true. I was dismayed to read the derisory comments he made about her behind her back, and once I researched his and William Thackeray’s professional relationship, I discovered George Smith had used Charlotte as the bait to sign Thackeray as the bigger client, discarding Charlotte when he felt she was no more commercial use to him. I was very pleased to find in the course of my research that Elizabeth Gaskell made it clear to him she was not as impressed by him as Charlotte had been.

​

5) Did Branwell Bronte come up in your research or findings at all? 

 

He did. I’m interested in him and uncovered a lot about him that I didn’t include in The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. While my book focuses on end of Charlotte’s life, I looked at the entire lives of the Brontë family, with my fingertip research covering the 10 years on either side of 1850.  To emphasise Charlotte’s isolation, I decided Branwell, Emily and Anne could not be living presences in my book – so there are no potted biographies of them or flashbacks to earlier eras – and that everything about them had to be anecdotal. Because by then they too were just stories.

 

6) What was your understanding of Charlotte Bronte before writing your book and how do you see her now after researching and writing about her life? 

 

My admiration for her strength and determination increased. I knew her as the iconic figure we’re all familiar with but research brings you closer to a subject than simply reading about them. I’m in awe of her now despite being more conscious of her shortcomings and flaws. 

 

7) What is your research process like and your writing process? 

 

I immersed myself in the archival material and read everything I could find that related to the Brontës and everyone associated with them. I think I managed to source and read every book and article about themwritten between 1858 and 1920, as well as selected books and journal papers published since, and extended my research from letters and manuscripts to daily newspapers, weather reports and railway timetables. Not all of it, of course, made it into my book. Writing it was obsessive and once I’d reached a certain point it felt unstoppable.

 

                   U.S. edition pre-order now

8) Congratulations on the U.S. publication of The Invention of Charlotte Brontë to be published in 2025. 

Thank you! I’m so excited for the book to come to the US and honoured to have it picked up by such an esteemed publishing house as Pegasus. It arrives inAugust 2025 but is already available for pre-order from Simon & Schuster.

For more information about the author in the United Kingdom , The History Press

For more information about the author’s United States publication, Simon and Schuster

To purchase a copy, Amazon UK

Book Review of The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse (Book Four of The Joubert Family Chronicles)

HARDCOVER

PUBLICATION DATE 10 October 2024

PRINT LENGTH 480 pages

PUBLISHER MANTLE

Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, arrives in search of her cousin — the notorious she-captain and pirate commander Louise Reydon-Joubert — who landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years before, then disappeared without a trace . . .

Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family — Isabelle Lepard — has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. Intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the crimes and tragedies still shadow the present. And now, Isabelle faces a race against time if she is to discover the truth, and escape with her life . . .

In France, the women would not have been friends. They would have had nothing in common. Their lives would not have crossed. But here, refugees all, different alliances were being created. Only they knew what it was like never to feel safe, to understand that one's home was not always a sanctuary.

Isabelle was descended from one of the great, lost, Huguenot families of France and was in sole possession of the substantial archive passed down through the family by Suzanne Joubert and her Lepard descendants.  The collection-which contained all of Minou's journals, Louise's prison diary and Suzanne's notebooks, written over many years in England-told  of the Joubert family's flight from Carcassone to Puivert, Puivert to Paris, Paris to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to the Cape and back again. But the key piece of the story, what had happened when Louise and Gilles first set foot in the Cape, was still missing. Isabelle intended to solve that mystery and then endow her own Family Archive and Reading Room.  A space open to all, dedicated to the history of the women of her family. 

The Map of Bones is set against the backdrop of the Huguenot Diaspora during the Wars of Religion in France.  It is a story about refugees; about people arriving in an unknown land and building a new country.  It is also a book about the consequences of religious war and faith but it is not a book about faith.  It's about finding out what folks will do for good or evil. 

At the heart of The Map of Bones, are the lives of two generations of families, refugees, and many more women who have survived trauma, illness, and grief, so they can pass down their stories from generation to generation. These women and so many others are lost to the passage of time or are never remembered at all; having the men's life histories be written and recorded for all time. 

Kate Mosse writes with one hand in the past, one hand in the present and her heart and soul connected down through the ages bringing her readership women who are no longer forgotten and unnamed. Now they are heard, seen and loved for all  time.  

Thank you to Mantle Pan Macmillan in London for my review copy.

The Map of Bones is published in the United Kingdom now in your local bookshop or online.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography by Jeff Rosen

A bold new study of Julia Margaret Cameron’s Victorian photographs, charting the legacy of colonialism following the 1857 Indian Uprising.
 

Julia Margaret Cameron, the celebrated Victorian photographer, was a child of the colonies. Born in 1815 in Calcutta, she was the daughter of a governing official of the East India Company. After relocating to London in 1848, Cameron was embraced by other British expatriates and a celebrated cultural network. This circle included literary personalities like Thackeray and Tennyson, painters and critics associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and political figures like Thomas Babington Macaulay and Lord Lansdowne.

 

In 1857, Indians rebelled against British rule, and in London, Cameron became absorbed by news of the Uprising. In the aftermath of the revolt, national and imperial politics transfixed England, some seven years before Cameron took up photography. The impact of those forces, and the inspiration of the literary, artistic, and political works produced by her circle, influenced her earliest imagery. Through close readings of these photographs, which she assembled in

photographic albums, this book exposes how Cameron embedded in her work a visual rhetoric of imperial power.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Paul Mellon Centre (June 11, 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 292 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1913107426
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1913107420

Courage, however admirable in the field, however worthy of our respect, admiration, and gratitude, cannot alone entitle a man to promotion and distinction in offices of trust and honour, if he has not, besides courage, the mental and moral qualities required to do justice to that office. (A letter dated 11 September 1843 from Julia Margaret Cameron to Captain George Broadfoot, pg.35).

The book title, The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography is a reference to the Indian Uprising of 1857. In May of 1857, young Indian men had no choice but to serve in the East India Company armies. They revolted against British officers who commanded their regiments; in an uprising that caused a rebellion which spead throughout the Indian subcontinent. As 1858 ended, Queen Victoria dissolved the East India Company, getting India as a British colony.

For Julia Margaret Cameron, the shadow of the Indian Uprising was direct and personal effecting not only her family but her photography as well. For instance, Arthur Prinsep, Julia Margaret's nephew, was a cadet assigned to the 4th European Light Cavalry on 20 October 1856.  In January 1857, he was promoted to lieutenant and called into action from base in Lucknow fort to the Kashmiri gate in Delhi.  As if this wasn't bad enough, in July 1857, living in London's Putney Heath, Julia Margaret left her home and travelled to the Photographic Institution on New Bond Street, so she could have a portrait made of her eldest son Eugene, who was about to report for duty in the Royal Artillery.  It was on the same day, 31 July 1857, that Julia Margaret wrote a letter to her eldest daughter, Juley, still thinking of the Indian Uprising, 

The extra telegraph of today brings shocking accounts of the massacre of European Women & Children- & of course this is shocking enough-but of course also our Soldiers must have been enveloped in defending them - & then other Regiments have revolted the 3rd Regiment I think this was the Regiment after swearing fidelity and receiving arms issued & murdered all their officers, (In a letter dated 31 July 1857 from Julia Margaret Cameron to her daughter Julia Hay Cameron, pg.70).

Being born of Indian blood, Julia Margaret Pattle was born in the capital city of Calcutta (Kolkata), daughter of a governing official of the East India Company. She would grow up to marry Charles Hay Cameron, President of the Calcutta Council of Education and member of the Supreme Council of India.

This book makes the case that Julia Margaet Cameron was shaped personally by these historical forces and argues that the legacy of the war in India infused her sense of national identity and enforced both her artistic practice and the narrative choices of her photography.

I establish that her early photographic activities - especially her construction of gift albums of members of her circle - were shaped by a discourse of British colonial superiority and driven by her strong desires to contribute to that historical narrative (Author and professor Jeff Rosen, pg. 70).

                                                           The lovely remains of my little Adeline (1872) 

The above photograph taken by Julia Margaret Cameron shows the dead body of Adeline Grace Clogstoun who died in Julia's home as a result of an accident rough-housing with her siblings. Placed on the wall is a framed photograph of Adeline's father who was a military man; an example of the Indian Uprising of 1857in plain sight.

                                           'Baby Pictet' by Julia Margaret Cameron, April 1864

Julia wrote underneath her albumen print, 'One year old infant shipwrecked once in the Madras surf and again in the wreck of the Colombo steamer. 'Baby Pictet' born Georgina Anna Mary Pictet on 12 September 1862 to Rose Prinsep Mackenzie and Francis Frederic Pictet. Georgina was Julia's great-niece.

                                        Sir Galahad and the Nun by Julia Margaret Cameron 1874

I am so happy that author Jeff Rosen has identified the young male sitter in the albumen print portraying Sir Galahad as  Arthur Prinsep, Julia Margaret's nephew. Julia Margaret Cameron captures the moment when the nun transfixes Sir Galahad with magical powers as she covers him in 'a strong sword-belt, and wove with silver thread, and crimson in the belt a strange device, a crimson grail with a silver beam'. Julia wants to convey how Sir Galahad's evangelical faith triumphs over militarism. 

                                                                                    

                                    Oscar Rejlander & Julia Margaret Cameron, At the Well, 1863

A series of photos taken during Oscar Rejlander's visit to Julia Margaret Cameron's home, Dimbola Lodge on Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom. Oscar photographed Julia's housemaids (shown in the photo) going about their daily duties as well as Julia's children. Some wonderful moments were captured.

Thank you to staff at Paul Mellon Centre and Yale University for mailing me a review copy. It is such a beautiful book.

To purchase a copy, Julia Margaret Cameron

 

 

Book Review: The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. Her Last Years and the Scandal That Made Her By Graham Watson

Doomed survivor of a family of geniuses, Charlotte Brontë had a life as dramatic as Jane Eyre. Turning her back on her tragic past, she reinvented herself as an acclaimed writer, a mysterious celebrity and a passionate lover. Doing so meant burning many bridges, but her sudden death left her friends and admirers with more questions than answers.

Tasked with telling the truth about Brontë’s life, her friend, the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, uncovered secrets of illicit love, family discord and professional rivalries more incredible than any fiction. The result, a tell-all biography, was so scandalous it was banned and rewritten twice in six months – but not before it had given birth to the legend of the Brontës.

The Invention of Charlotte Brontë is a darker take on one of the most famous women writers of the nineteenth century, showing Charlotte to be a strong but flawed individual. Through interrogating known events and introducing new archival material into the story, it challenges the established narrative to reveal the Brontë family as they’ve never been seen before.

Father, I am not a young girl, not a young woman even. I never was pretty. I now am ugly. At your death I shall have £300 besides the little I have earned myself. Do you think there are many men who would serve seven years for me?   

Graham Watson's debut book:   Add this book to your research shelves everyone!  

Finally, readers of Charlotte Bronte now have a definitive research book covering the last years of her life (1850-1855). Graham Watson lets Charlotte Bronte's loved ones speak for themselves by including letter excerpts from Charlotte herself, her father and husband. 

As the book opens, Charlotte is the surviving Bronte sibling left to care for her aging father, Rev. Patrick Bronte. She also struggles with being known in her own lifetime as a published author of Jane Eyre and Villette. Although, there were numerous obstacles in the way of Charlotte marrying Arthur Nicholls they were put there by Charlotte and her father themselves. Luckily, in the end Charlotte would have her wedding and sadly very brief marriage as Mrs. Nicholls. 

One aspect of the book that surprised and shocked me was Charlotte's circle of female friends she kept during her lifetime. Author, Graham Watson includes three very specific women:  Ellen Nussey, Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriett Martineau. Now, Ellen Nussey was Charlotte's lifelong friend from childhood, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote the first controversial biographhy on Charlotte Bronte and Harriett Martineau I am not familiar with. 

You know that saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Well, unbeknownst to Charlotte, she had enemies disguised as friends who were very jealous of her since the publication of Jane Eyre. Sadly, it was Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriett Martineau who were the worst 'friends' taking every opportunity they could find to badmouth Charlotte in the press. I will say Harriett was 'evil' towards Charlotte and leave it at that. Graham Watson does a wonderful job giving varied information covering the rest of the lives of these three women up until and including their deaths. There is a lot to learn about  Arthur Nicholls as well and you see a side to Rev. Patrick Bronte that I don't think is usually covered.  

Readers can purchase the book directly from, The History Press                                                                                                                                                      

What I am reading next: Psykhe by Kate Forsyth

Kate Forsyth gives voice, power and agency to Psykhe telling this much loved myth from the perspective of the woman at its centre.

It is not wise to anger the gods ... or to fall in love with one.

Psykhe has always been different. Fair as Venus, the goddess of love, and with the hard-won ability to save the lives of those of mortal blood, she is both shunned and revered.

When she unwittingly provokes Venus, she and her sisters lose everything. Psykhe must find a way to make amends and support her family.

Befriended by an old woman, Nokturna, Psykhe finds herself irresistibly drawn to her young friend, Ambrose. But neither is what they seem.

For Psykhe has fallen in love with a man whose face she is forbidden to see. After disobeying this injunction, she must risk everything to try to save him, even if it means travelling down to the shadowy Underworld to face Proserpina, queen of the dead.

The way to the realm of the dead is easy. A thrust of a sword, a sudden fall, a careless bite of toadstool, and the soul is sucked away. It is the return journey that is difficult ....

The story of Psyche and Eros has been told for more than two-and-a-half thousand years. Kate Forsyth infuses it with new vigour as a life-affirming celebration of female strength, sexual desire, and empowerment.

• Published: 28 May 2024

• ISBN: 9780143776918

• Imprint: Vintage Australia

• Format: Trade Paperback

• Pages: 336

• RRP: $34.99

Out now in Australia.  You can order from Amazon Australia,  Penguin Publishing Australia

A review of Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2023

A creative re-imagining of the short life of Emily Brontë, one of England’s greatest writers

Isolated from society, the Brontë children spend all their time inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape she loves and no longer able to immerse herself in the fantastical world of Gondal that she and her younger sister Anne have created, she is simply unable to function.

As a child, Emily witnessed a rare natural phenomenon. After weeks of rain, the peaty soil on Crow Hill became so sodden that the earth exploded. Since then, her life has been dogged by tragedy and repeated failures. Her sisters are desperate to escape their unsatisfactory work as governesses and now the life of her brother Branwell, the hope of the family, is in turmoil. To the outside world, Emily appears taciturn, unexceptional; but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment, ready to burst forth. As the pressure on her grows, another violent phenomenon is about to take place, one that will fuse her imaginary world of Gondal with the landscape Emily loves so passionately, and which will change the literary world forever.

ISBN 10: 1787704815 / ISBN 13: 9781787704817

Published by Europa Editions, 2023, paperback

The landscape opening before me like an enormous map, the black branches of an immense ash tree clutching at the horizon. The fields were edged with hawthorn, bare of leaves yet still throwing thorny sprays up to the blue December sky. The haw berries were flat crimson like the dead blood of the year, but the rosehips were a sign of hope, little lamps shining from the hedgerows. A fat robin watched from a fence post, its eye bright with curiosity, and in a thicket of oak, the glossy leaves of the holly gleamed like a secret. When the frost was hard, we slipped and slid across the frozen brown ruts by the plough and the whole world glittered crazily, buzzards crying overhead. Sometimes the mist hung low, and we walked in silence across the fields, listening to the dripping of the trees, the muffled sound of horse hooves from the lane. Ahead of me, girls rising out of the mist like wraiths, then disappearing.

Fifteen Wild Decembers is an evocative story of six siblings named Bronte, three of them surviving sisters who would each write masterpieces: Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights, and Anne Bronte -The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  The Bronte siblings are each an enigma and with Karen Powell's beautiful writing Fifteen Wild Decembers sheds perhaps a different perspective on the siblings and their works. The land, the changing seasons, the weather, the Yorkshire Moors and Haworth Parsonage serve as magical inspiration to the creativity of these special sisters.

The reader is along for the ride. Told from Emily Bronte's perspective as the sisters along with brother Branwell write Gondal as children. The sisters go to Brussels, and the most fun to read are the chapters where the sisters each write and publish a novel unbeknownst to them that will stand the test of time. The death of brother Branwell tests the faith of an aging Reverend Bronte. Through it all, the family's love for each other is remarkable and inspiring to read within the pages of Fifteen Wild Decembers.

For more information on the author or to purchase a book, Europa Editions

Book Reviews: on books to be published: Enlightenment by Sarah Perry and The Skeleton Key by Susan Stokes-Chapman

 

Book Description 

Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley are fellow worshippers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love.

Thomas falls for James Bower, who runs the local museum. Together they develop an obsession with the vanished nineteenth-century female astronomer Maria Veduva, said to haunt a nearby manor. Inspired by Maria, and the dawning realisation James may not reciprocate his feelings, Thomas finds solace studying the night skies. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love?

Meanwhile Grace meets Nathan, a fellow sixth former who represents a different, wilder kind of life. They are drawn passionately together, but quickly pulled apart, casting Grace into the wider world and far away from Thomas.

In time, the mysteries of Aldleigh are revealed, bringing Thomas and Grace back to each other and to a richer understanding of love, of the nature of the world, and the sheer miracle of being alive.

Publish House:  Jonathan Cape

• Published: 02/05/2024
• ISBN: 9781787334991
• Length: 400 pages
• Dimensions: 242mm x 34mm x 163mm
• Weight: 619g
• Price: £20.00

I adored The Essex Serpent and Melmoth and this is what I’ve come to expect in subject matter from Sarah Perry. You find these elements in Enlightenment with the characters of Thomas Hart, The Macaulay girls, Nathan, etc., with Thomas’s obsession with the haunting’s in Lowlands Park in Bethesda Chapel and one astronomer Maria Veduva. This could’ve been the whole book for me. I was hooked reading those chapters and loved those characters and the misty rainy nights set the perfect atmosphere in the Essex town of Aldleigh. However, all of the astronomy, celestial references that are quite scientific and in depth with interrupting chapters took me right out of the novel and gave me headaches. I know nothing of astronomy and felt jarred by the subject matter. I found myself looking things up while reading a chapter. If you don’t mind that, I enjoyed the religious elements as well as Sarah Perry’s writing stellar as usual.

For more information about the book, Penguins UK

Book Description 

Meirionydd, 1783. Dr Henry Talbot has been dismissed from his post in London. The only job he can find is in Wales where he can't speak the language, belief in myth and magic is rife, and the villagers treat him with suspicion. When Henry discovers his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, he is determined to find answers.

Linette Tresilian has always suspected something is not quite right in the village, but it is through Henry's investigations that a truth comes to light that will bind hers and Henry's destinies together in ways neither thought possible.

• Imprint: Harvill Secker
• 
  
• Published: 18/04/2024
• ISBN: 9781787302907
• Length: 464 pages
• Dimensions: 240mm x 41mm x 162mm
• Weight: 704g
• Price: £16.99

The Shadow Key does not contain dark gothic elements throughout. The book reads more like a murder mystery with elements of witchcraft where the setting, Wales during the 17th century, becomes the most interesting aspect of this novel. When you finally find out who the murderer is at the end of this book its predictable. I was expecting a much different story based upon the promotion for this book.

For more information about this book, 

Harville Sacker