The London House

A woman searches for the truth about the disappearance of her ancestor in the spellbinding latest from Reay (Dear Mr. Knightley). Caroline Payne, a Boston pharmaceutical worker, receives a call from her college friend Mat Hammond, whom she hasn’t seen in six years. Mat is writing an article for the Atlantic focusing on Caroline’s great-aunt, Caroline Waite, whom Mat believes left her work for the British government during WWII to be with her Nazi lover. Caroline embraces the idea of finding out what happened to her great-aunt, who disappeared in 1941, and travels to London where her mother is now living to undertake the search. There, she pours through diaries and letters from her great-aunt and her grandmother Margaret, discovering how the relationship between the identical twin sisters was fractured when Margaret nearly died from scarlet fever, and Caroline moved to Paris to work for the designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Caroline asks Mat to come to London to help her search as they unearth a family’s deepest secrets and grow closer to each other. Reay’s fast-paced foray into the past cleverly reveals a family’s secrets and how a pivotal moment shaped future generations. Readers who enjoy engrossing family mystery should take note. Agent: Claudia Cross, Folio Literary Management. (Nov.)