The Woman from the Blue Lias — D.M. Mitchell

Toby Turner didn't expect to stumble upon the remains of a human skeleton, washed down from the cliff top by a recent landslip, because until now nothing exciting had ever happened to Toby Turner. He runs a small bookshop in the quiet seaside town of Lyme Regis in Dorset. His life's not quite on track; his bookshop's not doing too well, for one thing, and he's not sure his relationship with his girlfriend-cum-fiancé Trisha is going anywhere either â€" at least, nowhere she would like it to go. Trisha was introduced to Toby by his best friend Mark Boothman, and now he's beginning to wish he hadn't. Toby takes a dejected walk along the Blue Lias cliffs on Monmouth Beach to think things through, and here he finds the body of a woman murdered in 1978. The gruesome discovery and the resulting media attention he receives would have been bad enough to cope with, but he soon discovers he's being haunted by the woman from the Blue Lias. She tells him she loves him. What's more, he finds himself falling in love with her, finding he is unable to live without the one woman he has ever truly loved. His strange obsession starts to have a negative effect on his life and his health, which starts to deteriorate. In an effort to cure himself, he decides to try and solve the mystery of her death and why she chose him, of all people, to haunt and fall in love with, hoping by discovering what happened to her all those years ago they can both find peace. And so begins Toby Turner's bizarre journey of discovery that will lead him into very dark and dangerous territory. His search leads him to a hotel that used to stand high on the cliff, lost to a landslide in the 1980s, and to an old musician called Steely Jacobs who appears to be linked to the dead woman. But events take an unexpectedly disturbing turn when Toby discovers his best friend Mark has been secretly collecting information on a number of missing young women going back a decade or more. He learns about Mark's secret past and how he was implicated in the murder of his teenage girlfriend. Is this tragic death connected to the list of missing young women? And what has their disappearance got to do with the body Toby discovered on the beach, a woman murdered thirty-five years ago? How is all this connected to the mysterious hotel called the Belle Vue, long ago collapsed into the sea, and the aged guitarist called Steely Jacobs? And who exactly is the woman from the Blue Lias? Not only has he uncovered a body, Toby Turner had inadvertently scuffed away the thin covering of dirt from dark, long-held secrets, that will lead him into a corrupt world of vice and murder. His life will never be the same again. D. M. Mitchell pens yet another taut psychological thriller complete with supernatural chills, peopled with an array of larger-than-life characters, deliciously devious twists and turns, with every seemingly disparate thread coming neatly together in a trademark surprise ending that will leave you speechless…