The Lost History of Dreams

A post-mortem photographer unearths the dark secrets of a famed poet's marriage in this "sensual, twisting gothic tale…in the tradition of A.S. Byatt's Possession, Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights" (BookPage).

Kirkus starred review • CrimeReads Best Book of the Year • Amazon, BN.com and Kobo bestseller

When famed Byronesque poet Hugh de Bonne is found dead in his bath one morning in 1850, arrangements are left to his estranged cousin, historian turned postmortem photographer Robert Highstead. De Bonne's will instructs that he should be buried in a stained glass chapel set on the Shropshire moors, built to house the remains of his beloved wife and muse, Ada. It has since been locked to all outsiders—especially the rabid, cultlike fans of de Bonne's final book, The Lost History of Dreams.

Only Ada's grief-stricken niece, Isabelle, holds the key, but she refuses to open the chapel unless Robert agrees to her bargain: Before he can lay Hugh to rest, Robert must record the real story behind her aunt's ill-fated marriage to the poet over the course of five nights—a story that is both love story and ghost story.

Blurring the line between the past and the present, truth and fiction, and ultimately, life and death, The Lost History of Dreams is "a surrealist, haunting tale of suspense where every prediction turns out to be merely a step toward a bigger reveal" (Booklist). Read first three chapters (PDF format).