A01=Leonora Nattrass
amateur sleuth female main character
Author_Leonora Nattrass
award winning books
book club recommendations 2026
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Category=FFD
Category=FFH
eighteenth century britain
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eq_crime
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
forthcoming
historical crime fiction mysteries
king george iii
Product details
- ISBN 9781805223559
- Dimensions: 153 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 05 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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'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?
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.
