I really enjoy how her books have strong female characters, split timelines, are always set in stunning locations, quite often including beautiful gardens, have a mystery at their centre and they are always atmospheric. I have read all of Kate Morton’s previous books and am a huge fan of her writing, so I was very excited to be sent her first novel in four years by the lovely people at Mantle books. And for a journalist without a story, a cold case might be the best distraction she can find. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime – a crime that has never been truly solved. In Nora’s bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.Īt a loose end in Nora’s house, Jess does some digging into her past. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia. At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek in the grounds of a grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mantle Main Market edition (13 April 2023)Īdelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959.

Kate morton homecoming