Bleeding Heart Square in London is a place with a past, and a dark and disturbing sense of history. In 1934, as the Depression and its attendant social unrest begin to grip England, several residents find that their lives begin to interconnect. Lydia Langstone, having fled her abusive husband and sought refuge with the father she hardly knows, becomes intrigued by the house’s owner, Philippa Penhow, who disappeared a few years before, after becoming entangled with a fortune-hunting man.

Though she supposedly made her way to the US, Lydia begins to suspect she was murdered, and, when she moves to the country, begins to investigate her disappearance in earnest. But her investigation uncovers more than she bargained for, and soon Lydia realises that there is more to her own past, and the scandalous circumstances of her birth, than she ever had reason to suspect.

A little slow in the first few chapters, Bleeding Heart Square soon becomes a riveting mystery, as unsettling and yet fascinating as the era in which it is set.