Rebecca’s account of the devastating effects that her older brother’s disappearance had on her family, and events that subsequently took place in 1989 when she was a substitute teacher at his grammar school, alternate with excerpts from Straitley’s 2006 diary.

With Scheherazade-like skill, she tells Straitley her tale, teasing out the story over the coming weeks. They tell Straitley, who takes the matter to Rebecca, but he senses that she already knows about the body. At the building site of the new sports hall, four of Latin master Roy Straitley’s students see what might be a body, partially submerged in a muddy sinkhole. Under Rebecca’s reign, girls have been admitted and change is in the air. Oswald’s was a bastion of male entitlement. Oswald’s (after 2016’s Different Class), becomes the first female head in the Yorkshire school’s 500-year history. Starred review from NovemIn 2006, Rebecca Buckfast, the protagonist of Harris’s enthralling third thriller set at St. After all, you can't keep a good woman down. She'll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.īut Rebecca is here to make her mark. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. Barely forty, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls. It's an incendiary moment for St Oswald's school. Now I'm in charge, the gates are my gates. 'A psychological thriller you can't put down and an antiheroine you won't forget.'-Harlan Coben Fierce.'-Bridget Collins, bestselling author of The Binding

'A dark world of emotional complexity and betrayal, where twist follows twist and nothing is what it seems.'-Alex Michaelides, bestselling author of The Silent Patient An electrifying tale of psychological suspense and revenge at an elite grammar school where secrets run deep.

Joanne harris a narrow door