'HAUNTING AND MULTILAYERED WITH A KILLER TWIST' - Marie Claire

'If you like emotional, gripping crime fiction then you'll love this book' - Amazon reviewer

'This is a beautifully written atmospheric mystery that immerses the reader in the life, work and rituals at a funeral parlour.' - Amazon reviewer

*******

Let the dead stay dead.

Clara Marsh is an undertaker. She spends her solitary life among the dead and bids them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. But Clara's carefully structured life shifts when she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlour, desperate for a friend.

It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn that Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between her solitary but steadfast existence and the perils of binding one's life to another.

Clara's search for the girl pulls her into a spiralling series of events that threaten to endanger the few people Clara has grown to love - and finally brings her own tragic and long-buried past to the surface.

'Such a refreshing read... I've not read anything like it before' - Amazon reviewer

'an hypnotic debut... There's a quiet, almost stealthy quality to the writing...Clara is an astonishing character, and with language as blunt as the death she sees every day, she expresses herself with devastating simplicity.' -New York Times Book Review

*******

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS TETHERED