The Distant Hours

Synopsis

The discovery of a long-lost letter reveals an old secret and the truth behind a woman's mysterious past in the best-selling new novel from international publishing sensation Kate Morton author of The Shifting Fog and The Forgotten Garden. 'The suspense will have you turning the pages long into the night.' -Good Reading 4 stars. 'The Distant Hours' is an engrossing tale full of secrets waiting to be told.' -Bookseller & Publisher 4 stars. Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close but when a long-lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle Kent printed on its envelope Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen-year-old girl Edie's mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family: Juniper her twin sisters and their father Raymond author of the 1918 children's classic The True History of the Mud Man. In the grand and glorious Milderhurst Castle a new world opens up for Edie's mother. She discovers the joys of books and fantasy and writing but also ultimately the dangers. Fifty years later as Edie chases the answers to her mother's riddle she too is drawn to Milderhurst Castle and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now the three still live together the twins nursing Juniper whose abandonment by her fiance in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle Edie begins to unravel her mother's past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.