'A wonderfully clever historical novelist' - DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Leonora Nattrass is a master storyteller' - JANICE HALLETT Leicestershire, 1774. Following a minor royal scandal, Susan Bell's father has lost his post as Dean of Westminster, and the two find themselves exiled to the family's country seat, Fortune Hall. Susan fills her days attempting to prevent her fiancé Lindley from being married off to a richer bride, while her father takes on the tutorship of Francis North, son of the Prime Minister. When a visiting surveyor mysteriously disappears near a fast-flowing river, leaving only his coat and hat behind, the man is presumed to have drowned. Susan alone is not convinced by this explanation, or by that of eccentric visiting librarian Mr Quintrel, who declares the surveyor likely lost in a network of tunnels that form the tomb of the mythical King Lear. But when the young Francis North also disappears, Susan knows that her family's reputation is at stake and she must investigate. What did the surveyor stumble upon that someone would possibly kill to hide? And what darker secrets are waiting to be revealed?

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR 'Filled with memorable characters... First-class entertainment * Sunday Times *
A truly gripping read * Guardian *
Gloriously entertaining... Authentic and relentlessly pageturning * Sunday Express *
A joy from start to finish -- Andrew Taylor
A delight. Nattrass again and again had me wondering at her skill and marvellous turn of phrase -- S.G. MacLean

Leonora Nattrass studied eighteenth-century literature and politics, and spent ten years lecturing in English and publishing works on William Cobbett. She lives in Cornwall, in a seventeenth-century house with seventeenth-century draughts, and spins the fleeces of her Ryeland sheep into yarn. She is the author of the Laurence Jago series, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award twice and longlisted for the HWA Debut Crown Award. Her second novel, Blue Water, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and Times bestseller.