Book: The Taxidermist’s Daughter

KATE MOSSE returns with a love letter to her home village of Fishbourne on the Sussex coast. It is 1912 and 22-year-old Connie Gifford lives in Blackthorn House with her widowed, alcoholic father. He once owned a taxidermy Museum, but stuffed animals are now out of fashion and father and daughter live a strange, isolated life.

Ten years previously, Connie had fallen down the stairs of the museum and lost her memory but suffers flashbacks. One day she finds a young woman floating in the stream at the bottom of her garden. While discovering that the woman has been murdered, Connie also has to deal with her father who has gone missing; a man called Harry who is looking for his father, Dr Woolston; a man and woman secretly watching her house and a storm that threatens to flood the village. As these events trigger more flashbacks, Connie finds herself caught up in a web of mystery, blackmail and murder. Mosse’s homage to home is a delicious, gothic page-turner with an engaging heroine.