Publisher details

Author: Luke Devenish
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery
Released: 01 April, 2016
ISBN: 9781922052155

The Secret Heiress

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Synopsis

A fabled house. A fabulous fortune. Beautiful, identical twins …Dark shadows fall across the golden summer of 1886.Naive country girl Ida Garfield longs to escape the farm. When Miss Matilda Gregory, the elegant mistress of Summersby House, offers Ida employment as a housemaid, Ida leaps at the chance. Yet it’s not for her servant’s skills that she’s wanted.It’s her inquisitiveness...But before Ida starts her first day, Miss Gregory is found dead. Fearing her one chance of bettering herself lost, Ida goes to the funeral, hoping that someone else from Summersby will still want her.Someone does. Handsome blond Englishman Mr Samuel Hackett is the late Miss Gregory’s fiancé. He expresses a keen need for a housemaid – and a friend.But Miss Gregory’s will brings to light an extraordinary deception and a terrible wrong from the past. Summersby has a secret heiress, whose name is also Matilda Gregory...A strange, ethereal girl with an irrevocably broken memory.Who is this mysterious heiress, and why is Ida bound forever to the truth?

About the author

Luke Devenish

Luke Devenish is an Australian writer of historical fiction, numerous plays, and several long running television dramas, such as Neighbours, Home and Away, Something in the Air, and SeaChange. His first two novels, Den of Wolves and Nest of Vipers, about the women behind the men of Ancient Rome, were translated into five languages, earning him a passionate international readership. A film and television academic at the University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts, Luke is as fervent about teaching as he is about writing, and is much enjoyed for his lively, inspiring classes. Luke lives with his partner and pets in a sprawling 1860s garden in historic Castlemaine, Central Victoria.