The Whispering Glade

In the leafy glade at Greythorn Hall, it is said, voices sound in the treetops and a lovely woman wanders. For Maya Wentworth, orphaned and sent to live in a Yorkshire vicarage with her aunt and uncle, anything to do with nearby Greythorn and its inhabitants, the Gaynors, is fascinating. She makes friends with Cora Gaynor and is strangely attracted to her brother Lyndon, married to ailing Melinda. When she later tutors Cora's nephew Jamie, Maya discovers some family secrets, too late to ward off tragedy when Jamie's father shoots his wife and her lover, Cora's fiance. As Jamie and Cora retreat into the glade's voices, Maya struggles to bring them back, then leaves Greythorn to forget. Years later, returning for her aunt's funeral, Maya visits the glade once more and, in a dramatic moment, saves Jamie from the ghosts of the past. The book's sudden happy ending seems out of key with its gothic mood, yet the story is compelling in the tradition of historical romance. Hylton wrote The Talisman of Set. November 19