Her entry begins:Every year I spend many weeks of the summer in my tiny cottage in Greece. Usually I’m writing a new novel myself so reading, novels or fiction, is a reward to myself for a good morning’s work.About The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, from the publisher:
Each year I construct a fantasy literary award for My Book of the Summer and its runners-up. This summer the prize is shared; because they are such different books, I can’t select just one.
I seem to be dreaming of snowy tundra, pine forests and glaciers a lot; yearning for the cold stillness of the far north, perhaps because my summer months are spent in high temperatures and weeks of blue skies, cicadas and searing sun. So my fiction choice is Dan Smith’s The Child Thief, set in post-revolutionary Ukraine. It is a wonderful tale of a journey across the snow both chasing and being chased and knowing all the while that lethal political forces may destroy the life you’ve left behind. Exciting, bleakly beautiful in its description of survival in landscapes of endless snow and...[read on]
When Great War veteran Laurence Bartram arrives in Easton Deadall, he is struck by the beauty of the place: a crumbling manor, a venerable church, and aLearn more about the book and author at Elizabeth Speller's website.memorial to the village’s soldiers, almost all of whom died in one bloody battle.
Now peace prevails, and the rest of England is newly alight with hope, but Easton Deadall remains haunted by tragedy—as does the Easton family. In 1911, five-year-old Kitty disappeared from her bed and has not been seen in thirteen years; only her fragile mother still believes she is alive. While Laurence is a guest of the manor, a young maid vanishes in a sinister echo of Kitty’s disappearance. And when a body is discovered in the manor’s ancient church, Laurence is drawn into the grounds’ forgotten places, where deadly secrets lie in wait.
A gorgeous restoration of the manor-house mystery, The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton is sure to entrance literary, historical, and crime fiction readers.
Read--Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth Speller and Erwin.
Writers Read: Elizabeth Speller.
--Marshal Zeringue
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