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Somershill Manor Mysteries #5
by S. D. Sykes
In the new Somershill Manor mystery, Lord Oswald de Lacy makes a devastating confession to his dying mother. But will he gain the forgiveness he seeks, or destroy his family?
England, November 1370. Oswald de Lacy, Lord of Somershill Manor, makes a devastating confession to his dying mother. But will he gain the forgiveness he seeks—or destroy his family?
In 1349, Oswald, the third son of the de Lacy family, was an eighteen-year-old novice monk at Kintham Abbey. Sent to collect herbs from the forest, Oswald comes across a terrified village girl. Frenzied with fear, she runs headlong into a swollen river. Oswald pulls her broken and bruised body from the water and returns her to the local village, only to discover that several other women have disappeared. A heinous killer is at work, but because all of the missing women come from impoverished families without influence, nobody seems to care.
Oswald vows to find this killer himself—but as plague approaches, his beloved tutor Brother Peter insists they must stay inside the monastery. He turns instead to the women of the village for help, and particularly the enigmatic and beautiful Maud Woodstock—a woman who provokes strong emotions in Oswald.
As he closes in on the killer, Oswald makes a discovery that is so utterly shocking that it threatens to destroy him and his family. Even as plague rages across England and death is at every door, Oswald must kill or be killed. And the discovery will be a secret that haunts him for the rest of his life.
"The framing device increases suspense, and the author's inventiveness and gift for description serves to deepen an already nuanced lead. Sykes solidifies her standing as a preeminent historical whodunit writer." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"We are plunged into Sykes' rich soup of Venetian intrigue; period detail; and increasingly intricate plotting, all with the deeply realized character of Lord Somershill fighting his own demons while investigating. A brilliant addition to the Somershill Manor novels." - Booklist (starred review)
"It's no fun reading a medieval mystery if it isn't steeped in filth, squalor and pestilence. S. D. Sykes gets right to the point [and] serves it all up in vivid detail, from the noxious smells to an actual burial pit, heaped with the putrefying bodies of plague victims. A clever plot." - New York Times
"Atmospheric and brilliant, with a haunting denouement [that] is sure to leave readers eager for the next in the series." - Shelf Awareness
This information about The Good Death was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
S.D. Sykes has always been a storyteller – even as a child – writing her first book at the age of six and insisting that it was typed up and bound! During her career in marketing and copywriting, she studied for an MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam, and then went on to have Arts Council funding for screenplay development. She finished her first book, Plague Land, after attending the course in novel-writing at literary agents Curtis Brown.
She has lived in Somerset, London, Southampton, Manchester and now the Weald of Kent. Her influences are gothic literature, film, nature, history and her large and mildly eccentric family.
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