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The night before it all begins, Jude has the same nightmare that haunted her as a child: running through a dark forest, crying for her mother. Now her six-year-old niece, Summer, is having the same dream, and Jude is frightened for her.
A successful auctioneer, Jude is struggling to come to terms with the death of her husband. When she's asked to value a collection of scientific instruments and manuscripts belonging to Anthony Wickham, a lonely eighteenth-century astronomer, she leaps at the chance to escape London for the untamed beauty of Norfolk, where she grew up. As Jude untangles Wickham's tragic story, she discovers threatening links to the present.
What do Summer's nightmares to have do with Starbrough folly, the eerie crumbling tower in the forest from which Wickham and his adopted daughter, Esther, once viewed the night sky? With the help of Euan, a local naturalist, Jude searches for answers in the wild, haunting splendor of the Norfolk woods. Dare she leave behind the sadness in her own life and learn to love again?
Paperback original
"Hore's first U.S. publication is a slickly packaged combination of present-day angst and romance cleverly interwoven with historical detail." - Kirkus Reviews
"[G]ood for those who enjoy literary mystery with historic threads..." - Library Journal
"Though bogged down by details, the plot catches fire in the last third, making the payoff almost worth the patience it took to get there." - Publishers Weekly
This information about A Place of Secrets was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rachel Hore is the author of four novels including the critically acclaimed The Glass Painter's Daughter and The Memory Garden. She worked in London publishing for many years before moving with her family to Norwich, where she teaches publishing at the University of East Anglia. She is married to the writer D. J. Taylor, and they have three sons. Learn more at www.rachelhore.co.uk.
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