The Secret Thread

Summer 2024. Jo O'Mara, a young writer, has just taken a job with Mimi Mott, a wealthy style icon who built a famous decorating empire from nothing. Mimi is in her seventies and newly widowed, and she is preparing to auction off her belongings. Each piece carries a story, and Jo's task is to collect them, which means Mimi will finally have to account for an early life she has kept private for decades. Jo has her own reason for wanting those answers, and she is careful not to let it show. The deeper she digs, the more she senses that the real history behind Mimi's success is far darker than the glossy public version. The story moves back to 1969 and the Rushwood estate, a picturesque English property owned by the Caswell family. Teenage Mimi and her sister Pamela live in a cramped, damp staff cottage in the grounds, where their parents work as gardeners. The girls have grown up with soil on their hands and a plain, ordered way of life, but Mimi is restless and wants far more than that. Then the Caswells' grown children, Nancy and Lawrence, come to Rushwood for the summer. The sisters are pulled into the glamour of their wealthy world, and it upsets the balance of their own. Under the hot sun, desire flares and the gap between classes begins to chafe, all leading up to a lavish society party where a death changes everything and drives Mimi and Pamela apart. Back in the present, the clock is ticking. Jo realizes that one auction item is missing, and so is a sister. She is determined to track down both, whatever the secret turns out to cost her. This dual-timeline suspense novel comes from Eve Chase, author of The Midnight Hour.