The Stranger

‘Oh, Diana,’ she whispers. ‘What have you done?’ But she thinks she knows, even as she says the words.

Cornwall, 1940. In the hushed hours of deepest night a young woman is found washed up on the rocks. Was it a tragic accident? Or should the residents of Penhallow have been more careful about whom they invited in?

In the midst of war three women arrive seeking safety at Penhallow Hall. Each is looking to escape her past. But one of them is not there by choice. As the threat of invasion mounts and the nightly blackouts feel longer and longer, tensions between the close-knit residents rise until dark secrets start to surface. And no one can predict what their neighbour is capable of…

In a house full of strangers, who do you trust?

Author Kate Riordan was inspired by Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca to craft a story of malevolence and dark desire set on the Cornish coast. ‘I pictured a Hitchcock blonde, cool and self-possessed, a glamorous alien in a sleepy Cornish village in 1940, inevitably stalked by Trouble with a capital T.’, Riordan writes, ‘she was going to be beautiful and charismatic and awful, all at once.’ Questions of guilt and innocence, trust and betrayal and the secrets of the past haunt the pages of The Stranger, making for a darkly compelling historical read.