Cirrus@Austlit

'Burma, 1945: Bea, Plum, Bubbles, Joy and Lucy are five young women in search of adventure. Attached to the Fourteenth Army, fighting a forgotten war in the jungle, they become embroiled in life-threatening battles that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

'Oxford, 1976: At the height of summer, a woman steals several rare Japanese netsuke from the Ashmolean Museum. These tiny, exquisitely detailed carvings are never seen again.

'London and Galway, 1999: Olivia, assistant to an art-dealer, meets with the elderly Beatrix, who wishes to sell her late husband’s collection of Japanese art. Concealing her own motives, Olivia accompanies Beatrix to a party where friendships will be tested as secrets kept for more than fifty years are revealed.' (Publication summary)

'Weaving. Healing. Haunting. The spellbinding story of a mysterious boarding school sheltering a centuries-old secret...

'Australian history teacher Thea Rust arrives at an exclusive boarding school in the British countryside only to find that she is to look after the first intake of girls in its 150-year history. She is to stay with them in Silk House, a building with a long and troubled past.

'In the late 1700s, Rowan Caswell leaves her village to work in the home of an English silk merchant. She is thrust into a new and dangerous world where her talent for herbs and healing soon attracts attention.

'In London, Mary-Louise Stephenson lives amid the clatter of the weaving trade and dreams of becoming a silk designer, a job that is the domain of men. A length of fabric she weaves with a pattern of deadly flowers will have far-reaching consequences for all who dwell in the silk house. 

'Intoxicating, haunting and inspired by the author's background, THE SILK HOUSE is an exceptional gothic mystery.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.