Christobel Kent – författare

One fateful night. One unthinkable family tragedy. One survivor. This is Alison's story.Perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train and Apple Tree Yard, this stunning psychological thriller from the author of The Loving Husband follows one woman's search for the truth about her family history.Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: with no ties and a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. But once Alison was someone else: once she was Esme, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote house on a bleak estuary. A girl whose family, if not happy, exactly, was no unhappier than anyone else's - or so she thought. Then one night violence was unleashed in the crooked house, in a nightmare that only Alison survived and from which she's been running ever since. Only when she falls for the charismatic Paul does Alison realise that to have any chance of happiness, she must return to her old life and face a closed community full of dark secrets.As she seeks to uncover the truth of what happened that terrible night, Alison begins to question everything she thought she knew. Is there anyone she can trust?

A RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK AND SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER'Wow. This one will keep your bedside light on until the small hours - it's unputdownable.' Richard & JudyFor fans of Apple Tree Yard and The Silent Wife, The Loving Husband draws readers into a marriage where nothing is as it seems...Fran Hall and her husband Nathan have moved with their two children to a farmhouse on the edge of the Fens - a chance to get away from London and have a fresh start.But when Fran wakes one night to find Nathan gone, she makes a devastating discovery. As questions about her husband and her relationships start to mount, Fran's life begins to spiral out of control.What is she hiding from the police about her marriage, and does she really know the man she shared her bed with?

The gripping, unputdownable new thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Loving HusbandYour best friend will always be there for you...won't she?Have you ever had that sense that you're being watched? And you turn, suddenly, but it's just a curtain, blowing in the wind? Or the dress hanging in the doorway? Nat knows something's wrong. Her best friend, Beth, would never have upped and left without saying goodbye to her. But no one believes that Beth was taken - she is a fly-by-night, a party girl who can't be trusted. No one's listening to Nat.But someone is definitely watching her...

He stole her childhood. She'll take his futureWhat would you do if you accidentally encountered the man who once abused you? And how would you get away with it?Bridget's life is small and safe: she loves her husband and her son, and she works hard to keep her own business afloat. Until one day, her former violin teacher Anthony Carmichael walks into her shop with the teenager he's clearly grooming.Carmichael begins to stalk Bridget, trying to terrify her into silence. But Bridget is older and stronger now and suddenly, she snaps and fights back.Now Bridget must find a way to deal with the aftermath of her actions...The gripping, compelling and timely new thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Loving Husband, The Crooked House and The Day She Disappeared. Perfect for fans of Apple Tree Yard and Lie With Me.

A girls' night out.A bad decision.A life, unravellingWhen Georgie is persuaded to join two old friends for Ladies' Night, she intends to have fun, to behave like the Georgie she was before marriage and motherhood changed her life. But one drink too many and Georgie's not sure what happened the night before. Now she's starting to wonder just what she's invited in to her life . . .

'In the far distance, the great terracotta dome of the cathedral appeared, like a mirage shimmering in the heat haze . . .'Gina Donovan arrives in Florence on a beautiful spring morning to stay with an old friend. She is hoping for nothing more than a break from her demanding young family, but as she soon finds out, this most ancient and beautiful of cities has its dark side. Within hours of her arrival, Gina meets the elegant Frances Richardson, who invites her to her birthday party. As Gina learns, Frances' party is the highlight of the expatriate calendar. This year it is to be held in the gardens beneath the city's medieval wall.However, as Gina's week in Florence unfolds and the party draws near, a terrible discovery is made. And no one in this close-knit community is free of suspicion . . .

Rose Fell's friends think she's taking a big risk when she leaves the security of home and career to move to the beautiful but isolated village of Grosso, near Genoa. But after a year of emotional turmoil Rose no longer has any ties back home, and she relishes the challenges of a new start. Making a home, however, in the ravishing, haunted landscape of Italy's Riviera coast turns our to be lonelier than Rose had anticipated. And it is only when she is asked to write a profile on one of her reclusive neighbours, the once-glamorous film star Elvira Vitale, that Rose feels her new life is really beginning. But when a young girl's body is found on the local beach, and the following day Elvira's hard-working cleaner, Ania, goes missing, Rose finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation that threatens the idyll she has worked so hard to establish.

On a scorching summer afternoon in the suburbs of Florence, a small girl goes missing at a crowded swimming pool and is never seen alive again. For fifteen years a terrible crime lies unsolved, becoming one of the city's darkest and most shameful secrets, until one bitter winter night another body is found, at another swimming pool, and the case is reopened. Celia Donnelly had just arrived in Florence at the time of the girl's disappearance and can remember only too well the face that filled the front pages of every Italian newspaper. When word of the gruesome new discovery breaks, she is in the midst of arranging a weekend of birthday celebrations for a wealthy Englishman's wife. However, as Celia undertakes what ought to be a routine work assignment, she finds herself more closely involved than she could have ever imagined with a tragedy that has haunted her dreams for fifteen years; and it is Celia who is compelled to bear witness when the past returns to exact a brutal and terrifying revenge.

He promised, until death do us part.When bossy, loving, sensible Kate dies suddenly, her little sister Rose dutifully returns from a carefree life abroad to help Kate's widower and the two children Rose has never met. But she is unsettled to see no trace of her warm-hearted sister in the remote, dilapidated house, nor in Kate's cold, distant partner, Evan.After stumbling across a message that only her sister could have left for her, Rose's unease around the circumstances of Kate's death turns to open suspicion, but she knows better than to ask the grieving widower for answers.Determined to discover the truth of her sister's terrible last days, Rose has no choice but to keep looking. Eventually, she senses, the dark house will give up its secrets. But she is not prepared to admit that whoever threatened Kate's life might now be coming after her...Praise for Christobel Kent and her novels:'A highly superior slice of domestic noir' Mail on Sunday'Spooky, gripping and affecting' Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard'Echoes of Christie and du Maurier' Sunday Times'Beautifully tense' Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go'Gorgeous evocative writing' Erin Kelly, author of He Said She Said

One wrong step and you're in deep water.Sukie has had enough of not putting herself out there. She has had enough of her mother thinking so very little of her timid daughter. On a whim, she accepts an offer to go to a Greek island for the weekend with Jake, a man she has barely begun dating. If that isn't putting herself out here, she doesn't know what is.Heather is at the airport when she sees a young woman with an older man - and immediately she understands that the woman is in danger. Because in fifteen years, Heather hasn't been able to forget what Jake did to her. And the next thing she knows, she's buying a plane ticket and following them.What should have been a perfectly pleasant weekend away quickly descends into something much darker. As these two women come ever closer to each other - and to Jake - it becomes increasingly unclear who will walk away from the weekend with their life. Praise for Christobel Kent and her novels:'A highly superior slice of domestic noir' Mail on Sunday'Spooky, gripping and affecting' Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard'Echoes of Christie and du Maurier' Sunday Times'Beautifully tense' Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go'Gorgeous evocative writing' Erin Kelly, author of He Said She Said

One wrong step and you're in deep water.Sukie has had enough of not putting herself out there. She has had enough of her mother thinking so very little of her timid daughter. On a whim, she accepts an offer to go to a Greek island for the weekend with Jake, a man she has barely begun dating. If that isn't putting herself out here, she doesn't know what is.Heather is at the airport when she sees a young woman with an older man - and immediately she understands that the woman is in danger. Because in fifteen years, Heather hasn't been able to forget what Jake did to her. And the next thing she knows, she's buying a plane ticket and following them.What should have been a perfectly pleasant weekend away quickly descends into something much darker. As these two women come ever closer to each other - and to Jake - it becomes increasingly unclear who will walk away from the weekend with their life.

When Niccolò Rosselli, the driven, charismatic leader of a Florentine political movement, collapses at a rally, his young party immediately comes under threat. And when it emerges that his long time partner, Flavia, has disappeared, leaving behind not only a devastated husband but their newborn son, the political becomes dangerously personal - and Sandro Cellini is drafted in to investigate. The trail leads to a tired sea-side town and a modest hotel, where Flavia chose to end her life. But Cellini isn't satisfied - why would one so young and with so much to live for, walk away from all she loves? As he digs into Flavia's secret world, however, Sandro uncovers the hidden life of a woman consumed with private passions and a deadly, dark obsession. And as the private and public realms intersect, he cannot forget that life in modern Italy has a perilous edge - fuelled as much by rage as desire.

When private investigator Sandro Cellini is invited to attend a glamorous launch party for a luxury residence overlooking Florence, he has no idea what he's walking into. Behind the austere beauty of Palazzo San Giorgio's façade terrible secrets lie hidden: not only an old torture chamber uncovered during excavations, but a much more recent malevolence.Then the head of security dies under suspicious circumstances and Sandro takes on the dead man's role. He soon discovers that his predecessor's death was not random, or isolated, when one of the residents is found murdered in her room. Now, Sandro must work to untangle the secrets of the palazzo to unmask a deadly killer before the fate of another victim is sealed...

Sandro Cellini faces his demons...Sandro Cellini hasn't set foot in La Vipera, a derelict farmhouse just outside Florence that was once home to a free-living commune, for forty years - until the discovery of two bodies nearby leads him back there. At the start of his career, Cellini investigated an accusation that minors were being corrupted at La Vipera, but no charges were ever brought. Now, tasked with tracking down former members of the community, he has a chance to finally discover what really went on all those years ago.But in order to learn the true nature of the commune's mission, he must face his own traumatic memories. As he sifts through the lies, those closest to him are placed in danger. Only Cellini can unravel the final mystery of La Vipera, and so protect those he loves.

Introducing Sandro Cellini, ex-cop and private detective. Florence's answer to Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti.'Thoughtful, lugubrious, adorable Florentine Sandro Cellini has become my comfort-detective of choice... He make me almost long for a cold so I can go to bed and read.' -- Louisa YoungWhen a young English girl goes missing from among Florence's hard-drinking, high-living community of foreign art students, at first ex-policeman, good husband and newly private detective Sandro Cellini is unwilling to see any connection with his investigation of the suicide of an elderly Jewish architect.But as he looks more closely into the circumstances of Claudio Gentileschi's death the connections between the cases multiply, and Sandro's first case turns out to be darker and more complex than he could have imagined...

As Sandro Cellini gets to grips with the dispiriting realities of life as a private detective, touting for business among old contacts and following errant teenagers, an old case comes back to haunt him...Once the subject of a routine investigation back in Sandro's early days as an investigator, Loni Meadows - the glamorous, charming and ruthless director of an artistic Trust based in a castle in the hills outside Florence - is found dead in circumstances Sandro cannot convince himself are accidental. However inconvenient his suspicions might be, both to Sandro - whose marriage appears to be disintegrating - and to Meadows's erstwhile employers at the Trust, he presses ahead with the case. And as Sandro attempts to uncover the truth of Loni Meadows's violent and lonely death, he finds himself drawn into the lives of the castle's highly strung community and the closed world they inhabit in the Casentino's isolated hills.

Every August, Florence shimmers in the summer heat. But this year the heatwave is fiercer than usual, and the city's inhabitants have fled to the cool of the hills. So it is no surprise that amidst the shrubbery of a normally busy roundabout, a corpse lies unnoticed, bloating in the humid air.Sandro Cellini will not be joining the crowds of holidaymakers this year. The former policeman turned private detective has a case: a man who seems to have vanished into thin air - leaving his pregnant young wife alone in the city. Meanwhile, bankteller Roxana Delfino is also stuck in the city for the season, with nothing to do but worry for her aging mother and puzzle over the disappearance of one her regular clients.As all Florence sweats it out, Cellini attempts to grapple with his case and the complications it throws up. And when the weather finally breaks, it brings with it a shocking revelation...

Can you ever truly know the one you love? Fran Hall and her husband Nathan live in a farmhouse on the edge of the Fens with their two children. One February night, when Fran is woken by her baby, she finds the bed empty beside her and Nathan gone. Searching the house for him she makes a devastating discovery. As Fran finds herself under intense police scrutiny, she and her two small children become more isolated as she starts to doubt whether or not she really knew Nathan. Was he really the loving husband that Fran had trusted him to be? As police suspicion grows the questions for Fran begin to mount. Is there something that she is hiding from them - something that she has kept hidden from everyone, including her husband?

From the author of The Crooked House comes another stunning psychological thriller about family, secrets and the lies we tell ourselves. For fans of Gillian Flynn and SJ Watson, The Loving Husband draws readers into a marriage where nothing is as it seems.

The new gripping psychological suspense thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of the Richard and Judy pick The Loving Husband and The Day She Disappeared