Temple Regis, 1959: Devon’s prettiest seaside resort is thrown into turmoil by the discovery of a body abandoned in the lighthouse.
It’s only weeks since another body was found in the library – and for the Riviera Express’s ace reporter-turned-sleuth Judy Dimont, there’s an added complication. Her friend Geraldine Phipps is begging her to re-investigate a mysterious death from many years before.
What’s more, Judy’s position as chief reporter is under threat when her editor takes on hot-shot journalist David Renishaw, whose work is just too good to be true.
Life is busier than ever for Devon’s most famous detective. Can Judy solve the two mysteries – and protect her position as Temple Regis’s best reporter – before the murderer strikes again?
England 1917, and VAD nurse, Stella Marcham is home from the front after the death of her fiancé, Gerald Fitzwilliam. Broken by grief, and feeling trapped at home, she needs a change of scene. As it happens, her sister Madeleine is pregnant and feeling anxious at Greyswick, her husband’s family home, and when Hector, her brother-in-law, asks Stella to visit, she readily accepts.
Stella finds Greyswick to be the gauche house of a nouveau riche family. Dark, over-decorated, staffed only by Cook, Maisie the maid and the glowering Mrs Henge, it is not a happy place. Madeleine is anxious but she won’t say why. Slowly things start to fall into place and Stella starts to experience things she can’t explain.
Unfortunately, the lady of the house refuses to believe them. Hector arrives with an amateur supernatural investigator, Tristan Sheer, to convince the sisters that they’re being hysterical.
With Stella is Annie Burrows, maid and daughter of the man who died trying to rescue the youngest Marcham sister from a fire. Annie is unusual. She can see ghosts. And she knows who is haunting Madeleine and why. A decades old murder is at the root of their problems. So, in parallel with Sheen’s investigation, the women set about solving the murder to end the haunting.
In a house by the River Dart, schoolgirl Josephine Kennedy posts invitations to her twelfth birthday party – a party that never takes place.
Horrific violence is committed that night in the family home, leaving all of its occupants dead.
Based on a disturbing real-life crime, this compelling story explores Josephine’s fate through the prism of friends and family – the victims and survivors who unwittingly influenced the events that led up to the tragedy.
Josephine’s best friend, Susan, is haunted by the secrets of the birthday house. Can she ever find a way of making peace with the past?
Winter 1917. As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives.
At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons who were lost in the conflict. But as his guests begin to arrive, it gradually becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends on the island, the guests will find themselves trapped. Soon one of their number will die.
For Blackwater Abbey is haunted in more ways than one . . .
The Postmaster looked over my shoulder. As I turned to look I saw a flicker of movement from across the street. I felt unseen eyes peer at me. He walked away without another word. I watched as he climbed onto his bicycle and sped away down the street. I turned back and looked over my shoulder. Someone had been watching us. 1904. Thomas Bexley, one of the first forensic photographers, is called to the sleepy and remote Welsh village of Dinas Powys, several miles down the coast from the thriving port of Cardiff. A young girl by the name of Betsan Tilny has been found murdered in the woodland – her body bound and horribly burnt. But the crime scene appears to have been staged, and worse still: the locals are reluctant to help.
As the strange case unfolds, Thomas senses a growing presence watching him, and try as he may, the villagers seem intent on keeping their secret. Then one night, in the grip of a fever, he develops the photographic plates from the crime scene in a makeshift darkroom in the cellar of his lodgings. There, he finds a face dimly visible in the photographs; a face hovering around the body of the dead girl – the face of Betsan Tilny.
Hull, 1930. A terrified woman runs through the dark, rain-lashed streets pursued by a man, desperate to reach the sanctuary of the local police station. Alice Goddard runs with one thing in her mind: her daughter. In her panic she is hit by a car at speed and rushed to hospital. When she awakes, she has no memory of who she is, but at night she dreams of being hunted by a man, and of a little girl.
As the weeks pass and her memories gradually resurface, Alice anxiously searches for her daughter, but no one is forthcoming about the girl’s whereabouts – even her own mother is evasive. Penniless and homeless, Alice must begin again and rebuild her life, never giving up hope that one day she will be reunited with her lost daughter
Purchase Links
From 22nd – 29th August, The Lost
Daughter will be at the bargain price of 99p.
The final instalment of the Highbury trilogy, Dear Jane recounts events hinted at but never actually described in Jane Austen’s Emma; the formative childhood years of Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, their meeting in Weymouth and the agony of their secret engagement.
Orphaned Jane seems likely to be brought up in parochial Highbury until adoption by her papa’s old friend Colonel Campbell opens to her all the excitement and opportunities of London. Frank Weston is also transplanted from Highbury, adopted as heir to the wealthy Churchills and taken to their drear and inhospitable Yorkshire estate.
Readers of Emma will be familiar with the conclusion of Jane and Frank’s story, but Dear Jane pulls back the veil which Jane Austen drew over its remainder.
Published By: Crooked Cat Publication Date: 20th November 2018 Format: Kindle Price: £1.99
Blurb
A story of Family, Rationing and Inconvenient Corpses.
Life in 1918 has brought loss and grief and hardship to the three Fyttleton sisters. Helped only by their grandmother (a failed society belle and expert poacher) and hindered by a difficult suffragette mother, as well as an unruly chicken-stealing dog and a house full of paying-guests, they now have to deal with the worrying news that their late – and unlamented – father may not be dead after all. And on top of that, there’s a body in the ha-ha.
Keep reading for the review, a bit about the author and a chance to win another of Nicola Slade’s books.
Published By: HQ Publication Date: 7th February 2019 Format: Paperback I.S.B.N.: 9780008214791 Price: £8.99 Link
Blurb
London Society takes their problems to Sherlock Holmes. Everyone else goes to Arrowood. 1896: Sherlock Holmes has once again hit the headlines, solving mysteries for the cream of London society. But among the workhouses and pudding shops of the city, private detective William Arrowood is presented with far grittier, more violent, and considerably less well-paid cases.
Arrowood is in no doubt who is the better detective, and when Mr and Mrs Barclay engage him to trace their estranged daughter Birdie, he’s sure it won’t be long before he and his assistant Barnett have tracked her down.
But this seemingly simple missing person case soon turns into a murder investigation. Far from the comfort of Baker Street, Arrowood’s London is a city of unrelenting cruelty, where evil is waiting to be uncovered . . .
My Review
The publicity team at HQ are fab; they sent me this book in late December in time for the blog tour this week. I read it during the last few of days of 2018.
Let’s get to it then.
William Arrowood, his assistant Norman Barnett and the indefatigable Ettie are back, and doing their bit to make the world a better place. When Arrowood and Barnett are asked to find the daughter of Mr and Mrs Barclay, they are drawn into a world of corruption between asylums and workhouses, the abuse of mentally ill people and people with learning difficulties, and face a corrupt police officer and magistrate determined to prevent any investigation.
The story is told by Norman, assistant, back-up for the rather less than spry Arrowood, and recent widower who still hasn’t told anyone. It’s written in his voice, and he comes through loud and clear. His anxieties and frustrations with the case, with Arrowood and with himself as he grieves, fights for justice and faces the threat of being accused of murder. Ettie and Neddy as well as the previously mysterious Lewis come to the fore as they all get involved in the case. This cast of characters are an odd, complex little family and their contrasts and frustrations with each other as they butt heads and worry their way through first a missing persons then a double murder case are entertaining and endearing.
The descriptions of London life, the asylum, the farms, all feel real. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric and gripping novel, that had me reading aloud in my excitement to find out what happened next as we reached the climax.
If you enjoy historical crime novels I recommend this one fully. But read Arrowoodfirst, some of the references will make more sense if you do. I reviewed it in May 2017, and I think this one is definitely an improvement on the first.
![The Convalescent Corpse by [Slade, Nicola]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51qr0lXNN8L.jpg)
Everything Is Better With Dragons 