AustLit

Almost every graduating class had a girl who disappeared. A decades-old crime threatens to tear apart three generations of women in this unputdownable mystery that will keep you gripped until its last heart-wrenching page.

'1949 It is the coldest winter Orcades Island has ever known, when a pregnant sixteen-year-old arrives at Fairmile, a home for 'fallen women' run by the Catholic Church. She and her baby will disappear before the snow melts.

'2013 Frankie Gray has come to the island for the summer, hoping for one last shot at reconnecting with her teenage daughter, Izzy, before starting a job as a deputy sheriff. They are staying with her mother, Diana, at The Fairmile Inn, soon to be a boutique hotel, but when an elderly nun is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and then a tiny skeleton is discovered in the grounds of the house, Frankie is desperate for answers.At once an evocative, unsettling tale of past misdeeds and a crime thriller that will have you reading with your heart in your mouth, The Only Child is compulsively addictive storytelling from the international bestselling author of The Silk House.'  (Publication summary)

'Burma, 1945: Bea, Plum, Bubbles, Joy and Lucy are five young women in search of adventure. Attached to the Fourteenth Army, fighting a forgotten war in the jungle, they become embroiled in life-threatening battles that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

'Oxford, 1976: At the height of summer, a woman steals several rare Japanese netsuke from the Ashmolean Museum. These tiny, exquisitely detailed carvings are never seen again.

'London and Galway, 1999: Olivia, assistant to an art-dealer, meets with the elderly Beatrix, who wishes to sell her late husband’s collection of Japanese art. Concealing her own motives, Olivia accompanies Beatrix to a party where friendships will be tested as secrets kept for more than fifty years are revealed.' (Publication summary)

'Weaving. Healing. Haunting. The spellbinding story of a mysterious boarding school sheltering a centuries-old secret...

'Australian history teacher Thea Rust arrives at an exclusive boarding school in the British countryside only to find that she is to look after the first intake of girls in its 150-year history. She is to stay with them in Silk House, a building with a long and troubled past.

'In the late 1700s, Rowan Caswell leaves her village to work in the home of an English silk merchant. She is thrust into a new and dangerous world where her talent for herbs and healing soon attracts attention.

'In London, Mary-Louise Stephenson lives amid the clatter of the weaving trade and dreams of becoming a silk designer, a job that is the domain of men. A length of fabric she weaves with a pattern of deadly flowers will have far-reaching consequences for all who dwell in the silk house. 

'Intoxicating, haunting and inspired by the author's background, THE SILK HOUSE is an exceptional gothic mystery.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.