An Inquiry Into Love and Death

by Simone St. James

Overview

In 1920's England, a young woman searches for the truth behind her uncle’s mysterious death in a town haunted by a restless ghost…

Oxford student Jillian Leigh works day and night to keep up with her studies—so to leave at the beginning of the term is next to impossible. But after her uncle Toby, a renowned ghost hunter, is killed in a fall off a cliff, she must drive to the seaside village of Rothewell to pack up his belongings.

Almost immediately, unsettling incidents—a book left in a cold stove, a gate swinging open on its own—escalate into terrifying events that convince Jillian an angry spirit is trying to enter the house. Is it Walking John, the two-hundred-year-old ghost who haunts Blood Moon Bay? And who beside the ghost is roaming the local woods at night? If Toby uncovered something sinister, was his death no accident?

The arrival of handsome Scotland Yard inspector Drew Merriken, a former RAF pilot with mysteries of his own, leaves Jillian with more questions than answers—and with the added complication of a powerful, mutual attraction. Even as she suspects someone will do anything to hide the truth, she begins to discover spine-chilling secrets that lie deep within Rothewell…and at the very heart of who she is.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451239259
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/05/2013
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	37,235
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Simone St. James is the award-winning author of  An Inquiry into Love and Death and The Haunting of Maddy Clare, which won two RITA awards from Romance Writers of America and an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada.  She wrote her first ghost story, about a haunted library, when she was in high school, and spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time. She lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and a spoiled cat.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for An Inquiry into Love and Death

“I thoroughly enjoyed it!...Simone clearly relishes and is steeped in the traditions of gothic fiction - in the best way. She conjures that secretive, hushed atmospher perfectly, and the story kept me turning pages from beginning to end. At once an intriguing mystery and an eerie ghost story, it had more than enough spine-tingling moments to keep me gripped.”—Katherine Webb, author of The Unseen

Praise for The Haunting of Maddy Clare

“Chilling romantic suspense that evokes the lost era between the World Wars…Simply spellbinding.”—New York Times Bestselling Author Susanna Kearsley

“Compelling and beautifully written.”—New York Times Bestselling Author Madeline Hunter

“An atmosphere that is deliciously creepy and a heroine you won’t soon forget.” —National Bestselling Author Deanna Raybourn

Editorial Reviews

St. James follows The Haunting of Maddy Clare with another chilling story best read in the dark. When her Uncle Toby dies suspiciously after falling from a cliff, Oxford student Jillian Leigh is sent to identify his body in the small English town of Rothewell. Strange things start happening almost at once—the eerie scratching at a second-story window by phantom tree limbs; a book on ghost visitations found hidden in the stove. Toby, it turns out, had fashioned himself a ghost hunter and it appears that Rothewell attracted him for preternatural reasons. When Inspector Drew Merriken of Scotland Yard shows up, believing there’s more to Toby’s death than it appears, he drafts Jillian to help investigate the story of a local ghost who haunts Blood Moon Bay, soliciting advice from a neighboring family and various locals. St. James tells this story in two distinct moods: an immediate, campfire-appropriate tone that will heighten the pulse, and a ruminative mode to parse the mystery behind Toby’s death and the ghost he was after. Overcoming a sometimes uneven narrative, St. James delivers a quickly paced read that will satisfy both new and old fans. Agent: Pamela Hopkins, the Hopkins Literary Associates. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for An Inquiry into Love and Death

“I thoroughly enjoyed it!...Simone clearly relishes and is steeped in the traditions of gothic fiction - in the best way. She conjures that secretive, hushed atmospher perfectly, and the story kept me turning pages from beginning to end. At once an intriguing mystery and an eerie ghost story, it had more than enough spine-tingling moments to keep me gripped.”—Katherine Webb, author of The Unseen

Praise for The Haunting of Maddy Clare

“Chilling romantic suspense that evokes the lost era between the World Wars…Simply spellbinding.”—New York Times Bestselling Author Susanna Kearsley

“Compelling and beautifully written.”—New York Times Bestselling Author Madeline Hunter

“An atmosphere that is deliciously creepy and a heroine you won’t soon forget.” —National Bestselling Author Deanna Raybourn  

From the Publisher