From the New York Times bestselling author of Murder Road comes a gripping novel that "is the perfect blend of history and mystery, with a little paranormal activity and romance thrown in for the ride" (Suspense Magazine).
England, 1921. Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex's wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to the family's estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is much she never knew about her husband's origins…and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths' past is just the beginning…
All is not well at Wych Elm House. Dottie's husband is distant, and her son was grievously injured in the war. Footsteps follow Jo down empty halls, and items in her bedroom are eerily rearranged. The locals say the family is cursed, and that a ghost in the woods has never rested. And when Jo discovers her husband's darkest secrets, she wonders if she ever really knew him. Isolated in a place of deception and grief, she must find the truth or lose herself forever.
And then a familiar stranger arrives at Wych Elm House… Praise for Lost Among the Living
"Though all of St. James's books are splendid, this is her finest since The Haunting of Maddy Clare. The suspense level is top-notch, and the romance is one of the author's very best."-Library Journal
"Readers who enjoyed the classic Rebecca or even witnessed the Alfred Hitchcock film version, will absolutely love this story…A book that could very well one day become its own classic…This is the perfect blend of history and mystery, with a little paranormal activity and romance thrown in for the ride."-Suspense Magazine
Praise for the Award-Winning Novels of Simone St. James
"Downright scary and atmospheric. I flew through the pages."-Lisa Gardner, New York Times Bestselling Author of Crash and Burn
"Chilling romantic suspense that evokes the lost era between the world wars."-Susanna Kearsley, New York Times Bestselling Author of A Desperate Fortune
"Drips with atmosphere and emotion."-Publishers Weekly
"Psychic Ellie Winter and her partner, war-damaged James Hawley, have terrific chemistry."-Susan Elia MacNeal, New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope Mysteries
"A 21st-century version of Mary Stewart...St. James layers the atmosphere with the requisite dread, and one can't help but read on...Just the right mix of suspense, creepiness, and empathy."-National Post (Toronto) Simone St. James is the award-winning author of The Haunting of Maddy Clare, which won two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America and an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada. Her second novel, An Inquiry into Love and Death, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. She wrote her first ghost story, about a haunted library, when she was in high school, and spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***
Copyright © 2016 Simone St. James
Chapter Five
My bedroom at Wych Elm House was on the second floor, overlooking the front of the house. I could see the circular drive leading off into the trees, and the overgrown front lawn. It did not escape me that my window was almost beneath the upper gable and that my view was of where Frances Forsyth's body would have landed the day she jumped.
Queer cousin Fran. She has died, poor thing.
That simple sentence of Alex's, one that hid so much. Perhaps he had hoped to shield me from disturbing family news; perhaps he hadn't wanted to put the distressing facts in a letter from the Front that would be read by censors, strangers. Perhaps he'd been ashamed of Frances's madness, the strain of insanity
