Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

Cambridge, 2003: Cameron Brown, son of historian Elizabeth Vogelsang, discovers his mother's body floating in the muddy waters of the river that runs through her orchard. In her hand, she clutches an antique glass prism. The book she was writing, the fruit of a lifetime's obsession with the seventeenth century and the story of Isaac Newton as an alchemist, remains unfinished. Lydia, Elizabeth's friend and Cameron's former lover, returns to Cambridge for the funeral and is asked to ghost-write the missing chapter of his mother's book. She agrees and moves into Elizabeth's house. Soon Lydia comes to see that the shadow of violence that has fallen across present-day Cambridge may have its origins in the past, and that the secrets Elizabeth unearthed are bleeding through into the present. Lydia finds herself entangled, not only with Cameron, but also with a series of unexplained seventeenth-century deaths, a network of alchemists and a ghostly figure intent on sabotaging her work.

Rebecca Sott, 2007

Paperback, Very Good

290 pages

442g

23.3 x 15.3 x 2.5