Castle Knoll Files

In 1965, when Frances Adams was seventeen, a fortune teller told her that one day she'd be murdered. Thus began a lifetime of trying to prevent the crime that would be her eventual demise. No one took Frances seriously for sixty years - until, of course, she was murdered. But for Frances, being the village busybody was a form of insurance. She'd spent a lifetime compiling dirt on every person she met, just in case they might turn out to be her killer.

It is autumn in Castle Knoll and Annie Adams is busy settling into her new home. She doesn't find Gravesdown Hall particularly cosy, especially since she found two dead bodies there over the summer. What's more, ever since she arrived in the village, Annie has had the creeping sense she's being watched. Lonely, and desperate for some company, Annie starts talking to a stranger she meets in the grounds of the estate. The striking old woman introduces herself as Peony Lane, the fortune-teller who predicted Great Aunt Frances' murder all those years ago. And now she has a fortune to tell Annie.

When Annie Adams heads to London to visit her mother, Laura, the last thing she expects to find is a dead body. Least of all for it to be Fliss, the budding artist Laura had just taken under her wing. Annie is no stranger to murder - after all, she's solved a few cases already. And something about the way Fliss died feels familiar. She's seen a case like this before. Or read about it, rather, in the journals of her long dead Great Aunt Frances, whose close friend was killed in the 1960s in the exact same way: with her heart surgically removed from her chest.