One Puzzling Afternoon

A mystery she can't remember. A friend she can't forget.

I kept your secret Lucy. I've kept it for more than sixty years . . .

It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street, fifteen-year-old Edie Green is lonely. Living alone with her eccentric mother, who conducts séances for the local Ludthorpe community, she is desperate for something to shake her from her dull, isolated life.

When the popular, pretty Lucy Theddle befriends Edie, she thinks all her troubles are over. But Lucy has a secret, one Edie is not certain she should keep . . .

Then Lucy goes missing.

In 2018, Edie is eighty-two and still living in Ludthorpe. When one day she glimpses Lucy Theddle, still looking the same as she did at fifteen, her family write it off as one of her many mix-ups. There's a lot Edie gets confused about these days. A lot she finds difficult to remember. But what she does know is this: she must find out what happened to Lucy, all those years ago . . .

'Marvellous . . . a special gem of a book, a perfectly executed double timeline mystery with a twist you don't see coming. One Puzzling Afternoon is a dark and delightful lock box of riddles, secrets and memories. A spellbinding novel that enchants and unnerves in equal measure' - Inga Vesper, author of The Long, Long Afternoon