We’re back up to the Scottish Highlands this week, with another cracker of a novel by Isobel Blackthorn.
Regular readers will know that I love a historical tome to have atmosphere, and this is a book that lives and dies by it. Here is your spoiler-free synopsis:
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The Scottish Highlands, 1893. Ingrid Barker arrives back at Strathbairn to attend the funeral of her old employer, Charles McCleod.
Every bone in Ingrid’s body screams for her to leave, and as she walks from the graveside, she can’t shake the suspicion that Charles was murdered. As she hurries to uncover the truth and get away from Strathbairn, another murder takes place – one that traps her in the very place she is desperate to escape from.
Running out of time and clues, can Ingrid evade the truth of that terrible night up at the abbey the last time she was here, and can she solve the mystery of Charles’ death before his ghost does away with her?
An unputdownable gothic mystery laced with dark family secrets, SECRETS TAKEN TO THE GRAVE is the second book in the Strathbrain Trilogy series of historical mystery novels by Isobel Blackthorn.
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What I loved:
- The gothic feel about Strathbairn makes the place feel like a character all on its own, a forbidding presence, which is always a huge plus for me. A dose of the supernatural is never a bad thing either.
- The writing style is immersive – the first-person narration brings us directly into Ingrid’s experiences, feeling her fear and anxieties at every turn.
- The period-specific cadence to the language feels just right without being overdone.
This is a story with many layers, and it may well be one I shall pick up and read again.
If you like your historical fiction to have a ghostly chill running through it, I think you’ll love this one. Just be sure to sleep with the light on afterwards, just in case…
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About the author:
Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of immersive and inspiring fiction. She has penned over twenty-five books including a number of bestsellers.
Among her credits, Isobel’s biographical short story ‘Nothing to Declare’, which forms the first chapter of her biographical novel Emma’s Tapestry, was shortlisted for the Ada Cambridge Prose Prize 2019.
One of her Canary Islands novels, A Prison in the Sun, was shortlisted in the LGBTQ category of the Readers’ Favorite Book Awards 2020 and the International Book Awards 2021. The Cabin Sessions was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award 2018 and the Ditmar Awards 2018. And The Unlikely Occultist: A biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey received an Honorable Mention in the 2021 Reader’s Favorite Book Awards.
Blackthorn is the author of the world’s only biography of Theosophist and mother of the New Age movement Alice Bailey – Alice A. Bailey: Life & Legacy. Isobel’s writing has appeared in journals and websites around the world, including Esoteric Quarterly, New Dawn Magazine, Paranoia, Mused Literary Review, Trip Fiction, Backhand Stories, Fictive Dream and On Line Opinion. Isobel was a judge for the Australasian Shadow Awards 2020 long fiction category. Her book reviews have appeared in New Dawn Magazine, Esoteric Quarterly, Shiny New Books, Sisters in Crime, Australian Women Writers, Trip Fiction and Newtown Review of Books.
Isobel’s interests are many and varied. She has a long-standing association with the Canary Islands, having lived in Lanzarote in the late 1980s. A humanitarian and campaigner for social justice, in 1999 Isobel founded the internationally acclaimed Ghana Link, uniting two high schools, one a relatively privileged state school located in the heart of England, the other a materially impoverished school in a remote part of the Upper Volta region of Ghana, West Africa. After working as a teacher, market trader and PA to a literary agent, she arrived at writing in her forties, and her stories are as diverse and intriguing as her life has been.
Isobel has performed her literary works at events in a range of settings and given workshops in creative writing.
British by birth, Isobel entered this world in Farnborough, Kent, UK. She has lived in England, Australia, Spain and the Canary Islands. She now lives and writes in Spain. She is currently at work on two novels composed in Spanish.
You can find her at the following links:
https://www.facebook.com/Author.Isobel.Blackthorn/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5768657.Isobel_Blackthorn
https://www.instagram.com/isobelbwrites/
@isobelb-author.bsky.social
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/isobel-blackthorn
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