Kirjahaku

The discovery of a cryptic note hidden inside a second-hand book sends thirty-something Hugh Mullion on an obsessive search for its previous owner. Hugh uncovers secrets that have lain hidden for sixty years and turn upside down his views of personal identity and the certainty of the past.

When Jessica Tate finds an old country house guide in a box after her grandmother's funeral she is drawn into a mystery that has remained unsolved for over half a century and is set to change her life forever.

Clare Mallory has a Victorian mourning locket with the photograph of a girl and a curl of her hair. When Clare loses the locket in a fortune-teller's tent her quest to find it draws her into a dark episode of the family's past and the true circumstances of the girl's untimely death at Danby Hall, her Norfolk home.

Spending time in Paris during a break in his acting career, Colin Mallory sees a striking portrait of Sylvie Charlot, once a leading fashion designer. Despite a warning not to pursue his interest in her portrait, he is determined to find out more about the painting, who painted it, and why it was hidden for many years.

While staying in a Dorset cottage, Hugh Mullion finds a mysterious key down the side of an antique chair. No one can say how long the key has been there or what it opens. Hugh's search for answers will unlock the secrets of the troubled life of a talented artist, destined to be hailed a neglected genius fifty years too late.

Stephen Marling thought he knew his aunt Flora. But when he inherits her house in a quiet south London square a series of discoveries among her papers brings to light another person entirely. Who, for example, is 'Mr Magenta' and what part did he play in her life?

Lucy Potter is a successful artist but she has done no new work in months. She fears she has lost the creative spark that sustained her and enabled her to express her view of the world. Will she ever regain it? The chance discovery of an old notebook while on a walk in the woods provides a welcome distraction, raising questions she cannot answer. Who wrote it, why is it in code, what secrets does it hide? And why does it include the address of a house that does not exist? Partial decoding of the notebook, surely written many years ago, reveals troubling incidents in the life of an unnamed girl. Deeply affected by the girl's plight, Lucy feels impelled to find out who she is or was and what happened to her. Could she still be alive? Lucy's search for answers has an outcome she could never have anticipated. But will the re-appearance in Lucy's life of fellow artist Rex Monday help or hinder her attempts to re-establish her position in the art world - and provide the stability she needs in her personal life? As the story unfolds, we are drawn into the world as seen through Lucy's eyes. A world of colour and light, of shape and pattern and texture, inviting us to see it that way too.