New Victorian gothic novella: The Heir of Hawksclaw

 

When gov­erness Medo­ra Yates sets out for mys­te­ri­ous Hawksclaw House in the dying days of 1856, she has no idea what is in store. Hired to care for her employ­ers’ young son, she arrives in York­shire to find the boy too sick to meet her or Ger­ard Red­fern, the new tutor. When Mr. Hawksclaw abrupt­ly announces the next day that his son has died, Medo­ra and Red­fern know that there is far more to the mat­ter than he is telling them.

Was the child a vic­tim of foul play, per­haps even by one of his par­ents? Or is the sto­ry of his death a lie to con­ceal some­thing else just as sin­is­ter? Medo­ra and Red­fern set out to dis­cov­er the truth, but their task is a dif­fi­cult one. The boy’s frag­ile, griev­ing moth­er is in no posi­tion to help them, and the ser­vants are unwill­ing to help the new­com­ers, espe­cial­ly Mrs. Hawksclaw’s loy­al maid, Con­stance, whose fate is entan­gled more close­ly with that of her employ­ers than any­one knows. Along the way their inves­ti­ga­tion will unearth dark fam­i­ly secrets, past tragedy, and the true fate of the heir of Hawksclaw… which all cul­mi­nate in an aston­ish­ing act of redemp­tion.

Read­ers who enjoy the Vic­to­ri­an mys­ter­ies of Anne Per­ry and Bar­bara Michaels, as well as those who have come to love DeWees’s Vic­to­ri­an roman­tic sus­pense nov­els such as With This Curse and Sea of Secrets, will rel­ish the atmos­phere and unex­pect­ed turns of The Heir of Hawksclaw.