Secrets Taken to the Grave by Isobel Blackthorn

"I brace myself. Memories bombard me, an army assaulting my mind with the horros that occurred here".

"I suppose that's the nature of haunting. It's between the one doing the haunting and the haunted. And even though none of it is real to anyone else, it most certainly is real to me. Real, and dangerous".

Secrets Taken to the Grave by Isobel Blackthorn is a Gothic mystery set in Scotland in 1893.

Blurb:

Secrets Taken to the Grave (Strathbairn Trilogy Book 2)

The Scottish Highlands, 1893. Ingrid Barker arrives back at Strathbairn to attend the funeral of her old employer, Charles McCleod. 

Every bone in Ingrid's body screams for her to leave, and as she walks from the graveside, she can't shake the suspicion that Charles was murdered. As she hurries to uncover the truth and get away from Strathbairn, another murder takes place - one that traps her in the very place she is desperate to escape from.

Running out of time and clues, can Ingrid evade the truth of that terrible night up at the abbey the last timeshe was here, and can she solve the mystery of Charles' death before his ghost does away with her?

Ingrid Barker returns to the remote estate of Strathbairn for the funeral of her former employer, Charles McCleod. She had hoped never to set foot there again.

From the moment she arrives, she feels uneasy, as if every instinct impels her to leave. Yet as she stands at the graveside, holding her daughter Susan's hand and shivering with cold and apprehension, a chilling certainty takes hold of her mind. 

"I really shouldn't be here. Now that I'm inside the house, every part of my being is screaming for me to leave, leave immediately..."

She strongly suspects that Charles McCleod didn't die a natural death. His ghost manifests itself in angry outbursts. 

A terrible person while still alive, McCleod is a violent vicious ghost, who is intent on having it his way. Ingrid's peace of mind is disturbed, she feels pushed to find out what's really happened. Otherwise her life is under threat.

"I begin to fill with uncertainty... whether I should pursue any sort of probe into what happened to Charles, as he himself seems to want me to do, or if I should simply leave at the very earliest opportunity. Would his ghost follow me and haunt me in Winchester? Do ghosts do that? Can they?"

Ingrid is determined to uncover the truth before fleeing the place that haunts her memories. Asking questions will only rouse suspicions and alert attention to her own deeply-buried secrets. Before she can escape the cold house (cold both literally and methaporically), another body is discovered in the ruins nearby, and all of a sudden Ingrid is no longer free to leave.

As suspicions close in and time is running out, Ingrid must untangle the gruesome secrets buried within the estate. Is there anyone she can trust? The whole dysfunctional family acts suspiciously. They are all unpleasant and pretty horrible, from the McCleods to the serving staff. To add insult to the injury, Susan seems to be switching allegiance, becoming a pet of the cook, who enjoys manipulating a child to upset her mother. It is a battle of wits.

Even the house itself appears manevolent and hostile. "It is a house that oozes its own dark history from every pore of its stonework".

Snowed down, the estate is cut off from any possible help or means of escape. Chilling isolation reigns supreme both outside and inside the house.

Ingrid is alone in her quest. Apart from appeasing the angry ghost and solving the mystery, she must face the truth of the terrible night at the abbey when she was last visiting the ruins.

If she cannot solve the mystery of Charles McCleod's death in time, his restless ghost may claim her next.

Secrets Taken to the Grave is book 2 in the Strathbairn trilogy. You can read it as a standalone, but I strongly suggest reading the first book to understand the dynamics between the characters, as well as Ingrid's story before she arrived to Strathbairn.

The setting of misty Highlands, ruins of an old abbey, secrets that don't stay buried forever, hidden letters and manuscripts with creepy drawings, a vengeful ghost - all these Gothic elements are wonderfully atmospheric.

It's an intriguing, chilling story, with a bleak setting and a terrific atmosphere, the kind of story which pulls you straight in and doesn't want to leave you until the last page.

This post is part of the blog tour for Secrets Taken to the Grave. Many thanks to Isobel Blackthorn and Rachel's Random Resources for my e-copy of the book.

Purchase Links

Universal book link: https://books2read.com/u/mexV8E

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5BMZCVQ

Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/secrets-taken-to-the-grave/id6744722804

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/secrets-taken-to-the-grave-isobel-blackthorn/1147305411?ean=2940181569010

Google Books: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SLZWEQAAQBAJ

Rakuten Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ebook/secrets-taken-to-the-grave

Author Bio

 Isobel Blackthorn is an award-winning author of immersive and inspiring fiction. She has penned over twenty-five books including a number of bestsellers.

Among her credits, Isobel’s biographical short story ‘Nothing to Declare’, which forms the first chapter of her biographical novel Emma’s Tapestry, was shortlisted for the Ada Cambridge Prose Prize 2019. One of her Canary Islands novels, A Prison in the Sun, was shortlisted in the LGBTQ category of the Readers’ Favorite Book Awards 2020 and the International Book Awards 2021. The Cabin Sessions was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award 2018 and the Ditmar Awards 2018. And The Unlikely Occultist: A biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey received an Honorable Mention in the 2021 Reader’s Favorite Book Awards.

Blackthorn is the author of the world’s only biography of Theosophist and mother of the New Age movement Alice Bailey – Alice A. Bailey: Life & Legacy. Isobel’s writing has appeared in journals and websites around the world, including Esoteric Quarterly, New Dawn Magazine, Paranoia, Mused Literary Review, Trip Fiction, Backhand Stories, Fictive Dream and On Line Opinion. Isobel was a judge for the Australasian Shadow Awards 2020 long fiction category. Her book reviews have appeared in New Dawn Magazine, Esoteric Quarterly, Shiny New Books, Sisters in Crime, Australian Women Writers, Trip Fiction and Newtown Review of Books.

Isobel’s interests are many and varied. She has a long-standing association with the Canary Islands, having lived in Lanzarote in the late 1980s. A humanitarian and campaigner for social justice, in 1999 Isobel founded the internationally acclaimed Ghana Link, uniting two high schools, one a relatively privileged state school located in the heart of England, the other a materially impoverished school in a remote part of the Upper Volta region of Ghana, West Africa. After working as a teacher, market trader and PA to a literary agent, she arrived at writing in her forties, and her stories are as diverse and intriguing as her life has been.

Isobel has performed her literary works at events in a range of settings and given workshops in creative writing.

British by birth, Isobel entered this world in Farnborough, Kent, UK. She has lived in England, Australia, Spain and the Canary Islands. She now lives and writes in Spain. She is currently at work on two novels composed in Spanish.

 

Social Media Links –

 

https://www.facebook.com/Author.Isobel.Blackthorn/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5768657.Isobel_Blackthorn

https://www.instagram.com/isobelbwrites/

@isobelb-author.bsky.social

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/isobel-blackthorn