Lodger

Helen Scarlett returns to the years after the First World War in this second novel, following The Deception of Harriet Fleet. It is another Gothic story, eerie and steeped in atmosphere.

London in 1919 is a city shaped by those who marched off to the front and never came home. Grace Armstrong believes she has made peace with losing her fiancé, who was once the closest friend of her brother and a man who outshone everyone around him. He was listed as missing in action at the Somme, yet he begins to appear to her, both when she is awake and in her dreams.

When a body pulled from the Thames is identified as Catherine Smith, who boarded with Grace's family for eight years before vanishing without warning, Grace is shaken. Catherine had been a true friend rather than simply a tenant, so Grace cannot leave the matter alone. Her search draws her into the seedy and perilous corners of the city and into a scandal that once shook Edwardian high society. As danger closes in, the one person willing to hear her out is Tom Monaghan, a moody man with troubles of his own that he must face before he can help her uncover the truth.