Spirit of Lost Angels (30 page)

This is a work of fiction, a work that combines the actual with the invented. All incidents and dialogue and all characters, with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

My grateful thanks to the following people, without whom this book would not have been possible:

Lorraine Mace, Gillian Hamer, JJ Marsh, Barbara Scott-Emmett, Catriona Troth, Tricia Gilbey, Sheila Bugler and Sharon Hutt of the Writing Asylum for expert advice and support; Pauline O’Hare for the Barry’s tea, for weeding the garden and for always being there; Judith Murdoch for her wisdom and expert editorial advice; Claire Morgan and Gwenda Lansbury for their input on early drafts; Jane Dixon-Smith for her wonderful design; the very helpful people from Araire (historical research group of Messimy, France); and Jean-Yves, Camille, Mathilde and Etienne Perrat for their infinite patience with an absent wife and mother.

Many fictional and factual books, films and other material were useful in creating the atmosphere of Spirit of Lost Angels.

Books:

Anderson, James M.: The French Revolution

Doyle, William: The Oxford History of the French Revolution

Hibbert, Christopher: The French Revolution

Janin, Jules: The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman

Lever, Maurice: Beaumarchais a Biography

Mercier, Louis-Sébastien: Panorama of Paris

Moore, Lucy: Liberty

Rice, Howard C, Jr.: Thomas Jefferson’s Paris

Rattner Gelbart, Nina: The King’s Midwife

Robb, Graham: The Discovery of France

Xenakis, Mâkhi: Les folles d’enfer

L’Araire booklets (Groupe de Recherche sur l’histoire, l’archéologie et le folklore du Pays Lyonnais):

Foires et Marchés en Pays Lyonnais: N° 148 — March, 2007

Soins et Santé en Pays Lyonnais: N° 157 — June, 2009

Family separation, ill-timed romance and world chaos irrevocably change the lives of the women of
L’Auberge des Anges
, but their tragedies and triumphs represent a new generation.

1943. France is under the heel of the Nazi occupation and rebellious farm-girl, Celeste Charpentier dreams of escaping her bitter mother and the provincial village of Lucie-sur-Vionne.

Eager to help rid France of the occupier, she begins working for the Resistance. However, Celeste walks an even more lethal tightrope when she falls in love with a German officer.

In a hut in the woods, Celeste discovers the Wolfs — Max, Sabine, Talia and Jacob — who escaped a German roundup. She hides them in the attic of
L’Auberge des Anges
, exposing her family to great danger.

When people close to Celeste are arrested and deported to unknown destinations in the Reich, she must choose which battle to pursue: her passion for an enemy officer, or her fight to free France and release her loved ones.

The march of the SS into Lucie-sur-Vionne one hot summer day has such far-reaching implications that Celeste wonders if she will ever be able to forget, and forgive. Least of all herself.

The legend of The Royal Charter is almost as famous as the story of the dead girl who wanders the cliffs at Point Lynas – a victim of the 1859 shipwreck.

After more than a decade away, Sarah Morton must return to her childhood home in Anglesey to bury her father. It’s her chance to say goodbye, and good riddance, to her past.

Yet her father leaves her a legacy. A letter. And a safe full of documents about the ancient shipwreck.

The Royal Charter had been carrying gold. Huge amounts of it. And her father’s death suddenly looks like murder.

Determined to discover the truth, Sarah is dragged into a dangerous journey, discovering she and the girl on the cliffs have more in common than she could ever believe.

“Fast paced and compelling. With its rich landscape of shipwrecks, murder, lost gold, faith and forgiveness, The Charter is storytelling at its best.”

 
Amanda Hodgkinson
, New York Times Bestseller

Suicide – the act of taking one’s own life.

Homicide – the act of taking someone else’s.

An unethical banker suffocates. A diamond dealer slits his wrists. A media magnate freezes in the snow. A disgraced CEO inhales exhaust fumes. Four unpopular businessmen, four apparent suicides. Until Interpol find the same DNA at each death.

Beatrice Stubbs, on her first real case since ‘the incident’, arrives in Switzerland to lead the investigation. But there’s more to Zurich than chocolate and charm. Potential suspects are everywhere, her Swiss counterpart is hostile and the secretive world of international finance seems beyond the law. Battling impossible odds by day and her own demons at night, Beatrice has never felt so alone.

She isn’t. Someone’s watching.

Someone else who believes in justice.

The poetic kind.

“Original, well written, absorbing and ingenious.”

Jessica Mann
, crime writer, reviewer and journalist