The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Strange Fate Of Kitty Easton for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
This leisurely and absorbing novel is the second to be based around this sympathetic and unusual character; a series to be savoured (Joanna Hines Guardian )
Book Description
* The perfect story - a deep, absorbing, old-fashioned, moving mystery, from the author of the bestselling The Return of Captain John Emmett.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
As soon as I finished Elizabeth Speller's The Return of Captain John Emmett I turned to its sequel The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, grateful that I didn't have to leave behind the character of Laurence Bertram just yet. If anything, this second novel was even more satisfying and absorbing than the first, building on our knowledge of previously known characters while introducing equally complicated and interesting people.
Set in the years following World War I, Laurence Bertram is called to the village of Eastern Deadall where his friends William and Eleanor Bolitho are helping to construct a memorial to the village's war dead - a window in the church and a maze in the garden of the estate owned by the Easton family. As the Easton church is prepared for its new window, architectural mysteries are revealed, such as the floor hastily covered with tar and the suspicion of a forgotten vault. As a man who writes about churches, Laurence is perfectly suited to investigate the history of this building.
But that's not the only mystery. Before the war, the lord of the manor Digby Easton and his fragile wife Lydia lost their only child, Kitty. One day she simply vanished. The manic search of the family and everyone in the village for this lost child fills the novel as do the secrets of this damaged family. When the family with Laurence visits the Great Empire Exhibition in London one day, another terrible happening triggers off a sequence of events that strangely help to explain what might have happened.
The theme of The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton is the maze. The maze planned for the garden oddly mirrors the hidden design of the church floor and, as it turns out, the labyrinth beneath that floor.
As with the previous novel, the strength of this one lies in the characterisation. The Easton family, the Bolithos, Kitty and her sister Frances and Laurence, plus the characters he encounters as he chases the footprints of Kitty. But, as before, the war is never far away and, as the search for truth takes Bertram into the labyrinth, his claustrophobia and terror are vividly brought home to us.
Elizabeth Speller's writing appears effortless and is beautiful. This is book two. May there be many more.
Set in the years following World War I, Laurence Bertram is called to the village of Eastern Deadall where his friends William and Eleanor Bolitho are helping to construct a memorial to the village's war dead - a window in the church and a maze in the garden of the estate owned by the Easton family. As the Easton church is prepared for its new window, architectural mysteries are revealed, such as the floor hastily covered with tar and the suspicion of a forgotten vault. As a man who writes about churches, Laurence is perfectly suited to investigate the history of this building.
But that's not the only mystery. Before the war, the lord of the manor Digby Easton and his fragile wife Lydia lost their only child, Kitty. One day she simply vanished. The manic search of the family and everyone in the village for this lost child fills the novel as do the secrets of this damaged family. When the family with Laurence visits the Great Empire Exhibition in London one day, another terrible happening triggers off a sequence of events that strangely help to explain what might have happened.
The theme of The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton is the maze. The maze planned for the garden oddly mirrors the hidden design of the church floor and, as it turns out, the labyrinth beneath that floor.
As with the previous novel, the strength of this one lies in the characterisation. The Easton family, the Bolithos, Kitty and her sister Frances and Laurence, plus the characters he encounters as he chases the footprints of Kitty. But, as before, the war is never far away and, as the search for truth takes Bertram into the labyrinth, his claustrophobia and terror are vividly brought home to us.
Elizabeth Speller's writing appears effortless and is beautiful. This is book two. May there be many more.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Last year I was both charmed and moved by Elizabeth Speller's first novel, The Return of Captain John Emmett. I hadn't expected to the man who had led me through that story again, but when I picked up The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton I found that I would.
Six years after the end of the Great War Lawrence Bartram was travelling to the Wiltshire village of Easton Deadall, to help and support an old friend who had been commissioned to create a war memorial.
Because nearly all of the men of the village had joined up together, and they had died together too.
But a shadow had hung over the village, and the Easton family who lived in the manor house, long before the war. Because five year-old Kitty Easton had disappeared from her home years before, leaving no trace.
And then Kitty's father died in the war, leaving his widow holding the family estate in trust, for the missing daughter she could not believe to be dead. She was supported by her sister, by the family's loyal staff, and maybe by her husband's two younger brothers.
For a while the story moves slowly as Elizabeth Speller paints this picture, of places, of lives, of relationships. She writes beautifully, and every detail, every nuance is right.
And, in time, a plot begins to build. A village child slips away from a group on an outing, and the search for year uncovers a woman's body on the estate. And maybe that disappearance, that death, are related to the earlier disappearance of Kitty Easton.
Lawrence, as the outsider, the neutral party, becomes the confidante of many, and he begins to investigate.
Eventually all questions would be answered, and answered well.Those questions, and the facts that emerged, were intriguing, but this book held much more than mysteries. It was a human story, with characters and relationships quite beautifully drawn.
And, though the story was set in England after the Great War, its themes were timeless.
You see, it was a story that said a great deal. About how we deal with grief, and how it changes our futures. About the secrets we keep behind the faces we present to the world. And about how much we will do to protect the people and things we love.
The ending left a lump in my throat. Because the answer to the question of Kitty's disappearance was so unexpected, and yet so right. And because I had seen Lawrence, the man who had been paralysed by the loss of his wife and child when we first met, coming out of himself just a little more, accepting that he had to go on living.
And the hints about what his future might hold were very interesting.I suspect that we will meet again. I do hope so.
Six years after the end of the Great War Lawrence Bartram was travelling to the Wiltshire village of Easton Deadall, to help and support an old friend who had been commissioned to create a war memorial.
Because nearly all of the men of the village had joined up together, and they had died together too.
But a shadow had hung over the village, and the Easton family who lived in the manor house, long before the war. Because five year-old Kitty Easton had disappeared from her home years before, leaving no trace.
And then Kitty's father died in the war, leaving his widow holding the family estate in trust, for the missing daughter she could not believe to be dead. She was supported by her sister, by the family's loyal staff, and maybe by her husband's two younger brothers.
For a while the story moves slowly as Elizabeth Speller paints this picture, of places, of lives, of relationships. She writes beautifully, and every detail, every nuance is right.
And, in time, a plot begins to build. A village child slips away from a group on an outing, and the search for year uncovers a woman's body on the estate. And maybe that disappearance, that death, are related to the earlier disappearance of Kitty Easton.
Lawrence, as the outsider, the neutral party, becomes the confidante of many, and he begins to investigate.
Eventually all questions would be answered, and answered well.Those questions, and the facts that emerged, were intriguing, but this book held much more than mysteries. It was a human story, with characters and relationships quite beautifully drawn.
And, though the story was set in England after the Great War, its themes were timeless.
You see, it was a story that said a great deal. About how we deal with grief, and how it changes our futures. About the secrets we keep behind the faces we present to the world. And about how much we will do to protect the people and things we love.
The ending left a lump in my throat. Because the answer to the question of Kitty's disappearance was so unexpected, and yet so right. And because I had seen Lawrence, the man who had been paralysed by the loss of his wife and child when we first met, coming out of himself just a little more, accepting that he had to go on living.
And the hints about what his future might hold were very interesting.I suspect that we will meet again. I do hope so.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
What a fantastically good read this novel is! It has a real tension build-up and lots of page-turning puzzles over what happened to Kitty, who is sleeping with/wanting whom, cross-class relationships (of all types), misunderstandings, murder, betrayals and loyalties, all set in a post-war world turned upside-down period, beautifully observed. And there is a truly frightening incident at the heart of the book - and fear is notoriously hard to write, let alone inspire in the reader. I practically had to hold my breath while I read it. I think this book is a terrific sequel to Captain John Emmett which I read last year. Looking forward to more!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good descriptions, 2 dimensional characters
I probably wouldn't have chosen this book myself, but it was picked for my book group. However when I read the blurb I was quite keen. Then disappointed. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Misty's Mistress
Good second in a series
This review is from: The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (Hardcover)
"The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton" is British author Elizabeth Speller's second novel in her Laurence Bartram... Read more
"The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton" is British author Elizabeth Speller's second novel in her Laurence Bartram... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jill Meyer
"Kitty Easton" is no "John Emmett", sad to say
Elizabeth Speller's first Laurence Bartram novel, "The Return of Captain John Emmett" was one of my favorite books of 2011. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Sharon Isch
Downton Meets Easton
The brutally devastating impact of World War I was sharply drawn in daily English life at Easton. This season's Downton Abbey so similar in voice and theme. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Carol A. Levine
slow burner but worth it
It takes a while to get moving but the build up is clever and engaging. I love Laurence Bartram. Still dealing with the trauma of war and losing his wife and son and trying to... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lady K
gave up after 50 pages
I think it was the cover that attracted me to this book, but the inside was a real disappointment, the style is clunky and cliched, the set up is very slow, the characters all... Read more
Published 5 months ago by murmuration
Another fine novel from Elizabeth Speller
Speller's fine novel "The Return of Captain John Emmett" is a hard act to follow, but the author has effortlessly done so. No one-trick pony, she. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mr. Allan P. Gay
Laurence Bartram's second outing does not disappoint
We first met Laurence Bartram in The Return of John Emmett, set three years after the end of World War 1. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mrs. K. A. P. Wright
A lament
This is a book about loss, in some ways even more so than the first novel in the sequence. It's again a novel about place as much as people, and about a time as much as the... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Boswell
Doesn't work as well as the first Laurence Bartram book
I moved straight on to this after reading the first book featuring Captain Bartram, but sorry to say I didn't enjoy it as much. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Viv
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
