Manchester 1895. In the midst of a heatwave, a sinister killer stalks the city. One by one the victims are brought to Arnold Kelley and Daughter – Undertakers of Distinction for their professional services. Sophia Kelley is clairvoyant, and the souls of the victims reach out to her. She experiences visions of their relationship with the killer; she sees their terrible deaths at his hands. In 1888, Jack the Ripper’s victims were all working girls and the Manchester killer is equally selective. He chooses young, middle-class women who are tall, blonde and engaged in professions that in previous decades had been taken by men. Sophia is such a one. Society’s attitude to women is changing and the killer objects.
Sophia is engaged to marry a police sergeant, Nathaniel Roberts, and they each uncover clues to the killer’s identity which do not blend until almost the last moment, when both their lives hang in the balance.
A novel for adults. 446 pages.
The Unspoken Voices Trilogy: This is a series of three books, historical novels with a strong supernatural element. The three form the saga of people connected through family or the ties of friendship from the late Victorian period to WW1 in 1915 and finally WW2 in 1940. All are set in or near Manchester.
The main characters are all women. The first, the Victorian, is a female undertaker who is clairvoyant. Her fiancé is a police sergeant. She’s threatened by a mysterious killer who stalks the city one hot summer. The second is a nursing matron and a widow who takes a post at an auxiliary hospital in WW1 where both supernatural and human evil threatens the most vulnerable. The third book, in WW2 has two main female characters, one a journalist with the Manchester evening News and unmarried, and the other secretary to the undertaker. She is happily married with two children and heavily pregnant.
The romantic relationships change and develop for each of the women and although the men are very important in the stories, it’s the women’s lives and voices that the reader focuses on. Each woman faces threats to her life or that of someone she cares for. Sometimes this comes from a living person, sometimes a malevolent supernatural presence and sometimes from the environmental and historical circumstances at the time. All the women take advantage of the opportunities that open for women in their own time, but not without facing and overcoming the difficulties that arise.
Postage & Packaging:
Adult Books: 1st class – £4.45, 2nd class – £3.35
Children’s Books: 1st class – £2.65, 2nd class – £2.15
Books dispatched same day first class post.
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