"Combines a Ruth Rendell–like psychological realism, an Agatha Christie–like plot and a Dickensian feel for life's roulette . . . Pulse-pounding" ( The Wall Street Journal) .When Great War veteran Laurence Bartram arrives in Easton Deadall, he is struck by the beauty of the crumbling manor, the venerable church, and the memorial to the village's soldiers. But despite this idyllic setting, Easton Deadall remains haunted by tragedy. In 1911, five-ye...

A man investigates the deaths of his fellow veterans in this "haunting and beautifully written" novel of post–World War I England (C. S. Harris, author of the Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries).London, 1920. In the aftermath of the Great War and a devastating family tragedy, Laurence Bartram has turned his back on the world. But with a well-timed letter, an old flame manages to draw him back in. Mary Emmett's brother, John—like Laurence, an officer during the war—has app...

The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914.Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emme...

When former infantry officer Laurence Bartram is called to the small village of Easton Deadall, he is struck by the beauty of the place: a crumbling stately home; a centuries-old church; and a recently planted maze, a memorial to the men of the village, almost all of whom died in one heroic battle in 1916.But it soon becomes clear to Laurence that while rest of the country is alight with hope for the first time since the end of the War, as the first Labour government takes power, t...

In the summer of 1913, the world seems full of possibility for four very different young men.Young Jean-Baptiste dreams of the day he'll leave his Picardy home and row down-river to the sea.Earnest and hard-working Frank has come to London to take up an apprenticeship in Regent Street. His ambitions are self-improvement, a wife and, above all, a bicycle.Organ scholar Benedict is anxious yet enthralled by the sensati...

In 1880, Ada Curtis bore Gerald Howard the first of several illegitimate children. Ada was a housemaid, the daughter of a Lincolnshire butcher. Gerald was her employer and the son of a once-grand family now obsessed with its own threadbare nobility. They thereby sent their descendants tumbling chaotically into the twentieth century. More than a century later, inspired by the stories, reinventions and half-truths in her family's past, Elizabeth Speller - Gerald and Ada's great-granddaughter...

The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914.Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emme...

In the summer of 1913, the world seems full of possibility for four very different young men.Young Jean-Baptiste dreams of the day he'll leave his Picardy home and row down-river to the sea.Earnest and hard-working Frank has come to London to take up an apprenticeship in Regent Street. His ambitions are self-improvement, a wife and, above all, a bicycle.Organ scholar Benedict is anxious yet enthralled by the sensati...