A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 1 (of 3)

Twenty years ago, Ambrose Murray was sentenced to life for a murder he insists he did not commit. Found with a dead man's bracelet at the scene, branded a thief and a killer, he has languished in prison while the real killer evaded justice. Now he has escaped, and he is determined to clear his name. But in the very town where the murder occurred, another secret simmers. Wealthy heiress Eleanor Lloyd stands to inherit a fortune, yet provincial lawyer Matthew Kelvin has discovered a devastating truth: she is not blood kin to the deceased patriarch at all, but an adopted daughter whose position, and wealth, now hangs by a thread. As Kelvin wrestles with whether to reveal what he knows, and as Murray closes in on the truth behind the Pelican Hotel killing, the fates of these strangers begin to intertwine. Speight weaves a dense Victorian tapestry of hidden identities, class anxiety, and the long reach of the past. For lovers of sensation fiction and slow-burning mysteries, this is a novel about what happens when the truth refuses to stay buried.