The Mausoleum

Set in the North of England, this exceptional novel from Mark (the Aector McAvoy series) centers on two women, Cordelia Hemlock and Felicity Goose, who meet in a graveyard near the isolated village of Gilsland one day in 1967. Oxford-educated Cordelia is mourning the recent death of her nearly two-year-old son, and Felicity, a local, has come to lay flowers on her mother’s grave. A sudden thunderstorm arises, and lightning strikes a tree that smashes into a mausoleum. The two watch in horror as the body of a man tumbles onto the grass. The women take refuge at Felicity’s house, and when Cordelia later returns to the graveyard, the body has disappeared. The alternating narrative voices of Cordelia and Felicity slowly unfold a tragic tale with its roots in WWII that becomes ever more complex and frightening as the mendaciousness of human nature takes its toll. Evocative prose is a plus (Felicity is “a Gilsland girl. As much a part of the landscape as the cow shit and tumbledown stone walls”). Mark is writing at the top of his game. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (June)