Book description
England, 1911. Reverend Albert Canning, a vicar with a passion for
spiritualism - and his naive wife, Hester - lead a happy existence in
the sleepy parish of Cold Ash Holt, Berkshire. As summer dawns, their
quiet lives are changed forever by two new arrivals. First comes Cat,
the new maid; a free-spirited and disaffected young woman sent down from
London after entanglements with the suffragette movement and with the
law. Over-educated for her station, Cat baulks at her life of servitude,
quickly finding a place for herself in the secret underbelly of local
society as she plots her escape. Then comes Robin Durrant, a leading
expert in the occult, with whom Albert has been in correspondence,
enticed to visit Cold Ash Holt by the vicar's tales of elemental beings
in the water meadows around the village. A young man of magnetic charm
and beauty, Robin Durrant soon becomes an object of fascination and
repressed passion for Albert. During a long spell of oppressive summer
heat, the rectory at Cold Ash Holt becomes charged with ambition, love
and jealousy; a mixture of emotions so powerful that it leads,
ultimately, to murder. Katherine Webb was born in 1977 and grew up in
rural Hampshire before reading History at Durham University. She has
since spent time living in London and Venice, and now lives in rural
Berkshire. Having worked as a waitress, au pair, personal assistant,
book binder, library assistant, seller of fairy costumes and
housekeeper, she now writes full time.
