Recommendations based on "Possession A Romance"

An alluring literary mystery full of secrets and lies, when an art teacher at a psychiatric hospital in 1960s England finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of a mysterious patient who has spent decades living in complete isolation with his elderly aunts in a decrepit Victorian house. Perfect for fans of Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver, and Tessa Hadley.In all failed relationships there is a tipping point. It goes unnoticed at the time but can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park…The London suburb of Croydon,1964: Helen Hansford is unmarried and in her thirties. Something of a disappointment to her middle-class parents, she’s an art therapist at the Westbury Park psychiatric hospital, where she has been having a rebellious love affair with her colleague Gil, a dashing but married doctor.One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance at a derelict, vine-covered Victorian house a few miles up the road. There the police find a mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, his hair and beard down to his waist. It appears he lives in the old house with his elderly, frail aunt, who expires as soon as she’s admitted to the hospital. No one knows why William has been shut away for decades, unseen by neighbors, with only his two now-deceased aunts for company. Westbury Park becomes his refuge.When it emerges that William is not only sane but a talented artist, Helen comes to see him as something of a personal project. But as she tries to solve the puzzle of the Hidden Man’s past, Helen’s own carefully constructed life of secrets begins to unravel...A gorgeously written and life-affirming novel about life’s delicate layers of experience and connection, Shy Creatures reveals all the different ways we can be confined...and liberated.

Scarlet and Ivy return to creepy Rookwood School for a third mystery adventure!Perfect for fans of MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE.With their evil headmaster, Mr Bartholomew, safely out of the picture and kindly Mrs Knight in charge, it looks like life at Rookwood School is looking up. There's a ballet recital Scarlet is desperate to star in, and more clues to uncover about the twins' mother.But after their beloved ballet teacher Miss Finch suddenly disappears and strange Madame Zelda takes her place, freakish things start happening. Poison letters are circulating the school, and 'accidents' are plaguing the students. It seems that the girls are in danger once more…Is someone out for the ultimate revenge?

The New York Times bestselling “Grande Dame of historical mystery” (Washington Post) returns with another thrilling tale of mystery,As the l921-22 season begins, the Emersons are enjoying a busy period of excavation in Egypt, when they hear a lurid description of a man’s mysterious death. His widow is convinced he died of a curse, and implores the Emersons to return the “deadly” little statue that killed him to the tomb from which it was stolen--before it adds her to its list of victims. Clearly, it would be a serious error for the Emersons to start chasing tomb robbers, just when they have finally received permission to return to the Valley of the Kings, from which they were barred several years earlier. But the family soon realizes that the curse may be more real than they ever imagined….and they may be the next victims.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

With her student days behind her and her career well underway, Sue and Bill, now married, together try to run a little hospital in the New England hills that was presented to the community by the town's wealthiest citizen, Elias Todd. Sue is Superintendent of Nurses, and her old friend Kit is helping her along with many of her fellow students from her years of training.After all the exciting nursing adventures these two girls have shared together, one might think they would find their new work rather tame. It is anything but tame for Sue, however, with that irrepressible street urchin, Marianna, as a student nurse; with Jean Ditmarr, sophisticated New Yorker, thinking she could put something over on the young Superintendent; with Dr. Bill so busy being a good doctor that Sue feared for a while he might not prove such a good husband; and above all, with the mysterious disappearance of the hospital sheets! Sue Barton is at her best with all the excitement and fun that this nurse seems destined to find in her nursing profession. The authentic setting of rural hospital life is the perfect backdrop for another great Sue Barton story.

'What a page turner!' Daisy Wood, author of The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris 'A delicious Art Deco novel with a delightfully acerbic heroine.' Marius Gabriel, author of The German Daughter 'Original and immersive.' Eva Glyn, author of An Island of Secrets In a bookshop nestled in the sprawling streets of Lisbon, a shopkeeper leads a double life... Looking for a new start after her father's death, Lara Hope arrives in Lisbon in search of a family she's never met. As war storms across Europe, Lara finds solace and belonging in her landlady's tranquil bookshop in one of the most beautiful corners of the city. But when she witnesses a customer secretly swapping a book, she realises the bookshop is not all it seems. Lara is plunged into a labyrinthine world of mystery and facades, encountering new friends, an unexpected romance, and even royalty... Is she prepared to risk it all for this new life? Readers love The Bookshop of Secrets: 'The ending left me wanting more...these characters are too engaging and too ingenious to disappear into the ether' Historical Novel Society 'I lapped it up!' Eliza Graham 'A must-read for historical fiction fans and for me, Kerry Barrett's best book yet.' Annie Lyons 'A gripping 'what if' tale with a larger-than-life heroine at its heart.' Tessa Harris 'This book was an absolute joy. I didn't want to finish it.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'I adored this novel and found it hard to put down. The plot unfolds with ease and you easily warm to the characters.'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Beautifully written.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'An exceptional read.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

P.I Tamara Hayle and her latest client, popular radio personality Mandy Magic, share the same roots -- both grew up in the hardscrabble projects on one of the meanest streets in Newark. But that's what brings her to Tamara Hayle. Mandy Magic knows that each act of vandalism and seemingly random murder brings the demons of her yesterdays closer -- and each day that passes makes her easier to kill.

The fourth unputdownable mystery in the thrilling and bestselling SCARLET AND IVY series, perfect for fans of MURDER MOST UNLADYLIKE, SINCLAIR’S MYSTERIES and THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL. Scarlet and Ivy’s school trip takes a turn for the worse as another mystery begins to unfold... It’s summer, and the students of Rookwood School are thrilled to learn of a special trip to Shady Pines Hotel on the shores of Lake Seren.But the old hotel and the waters of the lake are covering up dark secrets. And when mysterious things start happening to hotel guests, it seems that a malicious new threat is haunting Scarlet and Ivy.Locals say that at night you can hear the ringing of the church bells and see lights under the lake. Could it be troubled souls buried in the flooded graveyard who are no longer at rest...? Discover the complete SCARLET AND IVY series, with six mesmerising mysteries to dive into. ‘A true page-turning, nail-biting mystery’ Guardian Children’s Reviews on SCARLET AND IVY

Sixteen-year-old Pilbeam may have made a terrible mistake. Living with her large family at 5 Brocklehurst Grove is wonderful in many ways, but remaining isolated from the rest of the world has become too much to bear. So Pilbeam decides that, whatever the consequences, she will go to the theater, and the whole family is thrown into terrible danger. Pilbeam's encounter with a nosy neighbor threatens to expose the family's long-kept secret, and that could destroy them all. Sir Magnus, the family patriarch, declares a state of emergency, making all members of the family virtual prisoners in their own home. But it may be too late. Because now Pilbeam's sister Appleby is rebelling, and even living under siege may not prevent the worst possible disaster from befalling the Mennyms.

With this latest entry in a bestselling series that evokes all the passion and heroism of history’s most heartbreaking conflict–the war that was meant to end all wars–Anne Perry adds new luster to her worldwide reputation.Angels in the Gloom is an intense saga of love, hate, obsession, and murder that features an honorable English family–brothers Joseph and Matthew Reavley and their sisters, Judith and Hannah.In March 1916, Joseph, a chaplain at the front, and Judith, an ambulance driver, are fighting not only the Germans but the bitter cold and the appalling casualties at Ypres. Scarcely less at risk, Matthew, an officer in England’s Secret Intelligence Service, fights the war covertly from London. Only Hannah, living with her children in the family home in tranquil Cambridgeshire, seems safe.Appearances, however, are deceiving. By the time Joseph returns home to Cambridgeshire, rumors of spies and traitors are rampant. And when the savagely brutalized body of a weapons scientist is discovered in a village byway, the fear that haunts the battlefields settles over the town–along with the shadow of the obsessed ideologue who murdered the Reavleys’ parents on the eve of the war. Once again, this icy, anonymous powerbroker, the Peacemaker, is plotting to kill.Perry’s kaleidoscopic new novel illuminates an entire world, from the hell of the trenches to the London nightclub where a beautiful Irish spy plies her trade; from the sequestered laboratory where a weapon that can end the war is being perfected to the matchless glory of the English countryside in spring. Steeped in history and radiant with truth, Angels in the Gloom is a masterpiece that warms the heart even as it chills the blood.