Ghostwalk

Ghostwalk

by RebeccaStott (Author)

Synopsis

Set in present-day Cambridge, but entangled with the 17th century, this is at once a ghost story, a love story and a beautifully told history of 17th century Cambridge - as well as a four-hundred year-old murder mystery in which Isaac Newton is a suspect. The son of a reclusive historian finds his mother's drowned body in the tributary of the River Cam that runs through her garden. She is clutching a glass prism. Elizabeth Vogelsang's magnum opus, a book on Isaac Newton's alchemy, is incomplete. Lydia Brooke, a writer friend of the dead historian, returns to Cambridge to the funeral. It is five years since she has seen Elizabeth's son, Cameron Brown, with whom she has had an intermittent love affair that began some fifteen years earlier. Cambridge, she discovers, is in the midst of an upsurge of attacks by animal rights extremists, an unidentified group called NABED. Cameron, who, as a neuroscientist uses animal experimentation, has been targeted. Cameron asks Lydia to act as a paid ghostwriter in the completion of his mother's book, Alchemist. Lydia agrees to the proposal and moves into Elizabeth's strange house, a triangular shaped studio on the banks of the Cam. Soon Lydia finds herself entangled, not only with Cameron, but also with a four-hundred year-old murder mystery, a network of 17th century alchemists and a ghostly figure intent on disrupting her work.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Edition: Export Ed
Publisher: W&N
Published: 08 Mar 2007

ISBN 10: 0297852051
ISBN 13: 9780297852056
Book Overview: A stunning literary ghost-story of entanglement and obsession; ambition and betrayal
Prizes: Shortlisted for Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2008. Long-listed for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009.

Media Reviews
[ Ghostwalk ] has a scholarly authority and imaginative sparkle all too rare. . . Mesmerizing . . . Rebecca Stott . . . has accomplished something distinctively fresh. -- The New York Times Book Review A hypnotic brew of speculation, intrigue and murder. . . You can't help but feel swept away. -- The Washington Post Book World Mesmerizing. - Booklist (starred review) Truly haunting. - New York Daily News Wonderfully written. -- USA TODAY Fiercely intelligent. - The Los Angeles Times Ambitious. - New Yorker Most impressive. - The Observer (London) Eerily compelling. - Time Out (London) Spellbinding. - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Stunning. - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author Bio
Rebecca Stott is a writer and broadcaster. She writes both fiction and non-fiction, teaches in an English literature department and is affiliated to the Cambridge history of science department. Her work, in radio writing, fiction and non-fiction, weaves together history, literature and the history of science. She is the author the non-fiction book 'Darwin and the Barnacle'.