A young woman searches for the truth behind her uncle’s mysterious death in a town haunted by a restless ghost in this gripping novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases . Oxford student Jillian Leigh works day and night to keep up with her studies—so to leave at the beginning of the term is next to impossible. But after her uncle Toby, a renowned ghost hunter, is killed in a fall off a cliff, she must drive to the seaside village of Rothewell to pack up his belongings. Almost immediately, unsettling incidents—a book left in a cold stove, a gate swinging open on its own—escalate into terrifying events that convince Jillian an angry spirit is trying to enter the house. Is it Walking John, the two-hundred-year-old ghost who haunts Blood Moon Bay? And who beside the ghost is roaming the local woods at night? If Toby uncovered something sinister, was his death no accident? The arrival of handsome Scotland Yard inspector Drew Merriken, a former RAF pilot with mysteries of his own, leaves Jillian with more questions than answers—and with the added complication of a powerful, mutual attraction. Even as she suspects someone will do anything to hide the truth, she begins to discover spine-chilling secrets that lie deep within Rothewell…and at the very heart of who she is. Praise for An Inquiry into Love and Death “I thoroughly enjoyed it!...Simone clearly relishes and is steeped in the traditions of gothic fiction - in the best way. She conjures that secretive, hushed atmospher perfectly, and the story kept me turning pages from beginning to end. At once an intriguing mystery and an eerie ghost story, it had more than enough spine-tingling moments to keep me gripped.”—Katherine Webb, author of The Unseen Praise for The Haunting of Maddy Clare “Chilling romantic suspense that evokes the lost era between the World Wars…Simply spellbinding.”— New York Times Bestselling Author Susanna Kearsley “Compelling and beautifully written.”— New York Times Bestselling Author Madeline Hunter “An atmosphere that is deliciously creepy and a heroine you won’t soon forget.” —National Bestselling Author Deanna Raybourn Simone St. James is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Sun Down Motel , The Broken Girls , Lost Among the Living , and The Haunting of Maddy Clare . 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. One My uncle Toby died of a broken neck in the autumn of 1924, just as I was starting the Michaelmas term at Oxford. I was pulled from the back of the lecture hall by a pimpled assistant in thick Mary Janes and an ill-fitting skirt who hissed that I had a confidential summons and must go to the administrative office at once. She even led me there, though it was just across the quad, so agog was she at the mystery of it. When I learned what had happened, it was a mystery to me as well, for my uncle had not been spoken of in my family in nearly eight years. I was shown into an unused office where the solicitor from London gave me the news. He was a compact man in a neat vest, out of place against the scored and mismatched furniture and stacks of books. Still, he bade me sit and spoke to me with quiet courtesy, as if we were not in a damp, borrowed room whose drafty windows barely kept out the mist from the commons outside. "I'm sorry," he said, after he had told me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief. "Do you need a moment before we proceed?" I looked at the handkerchief, apparently a spare, and the only thought I could muster was that he had come terribly well prepared. "You must give news like this often," I said. Surprise flickered across his face, and he folded the handkerchief again. "I'm sorry," I said, realizing how I sounded. "It's just that I don't know what to say. I really don't. I didn't know Toby very well. And I don't- That is, I've never dealt with . . ." I trailed off. How stupid for a philosophy student, who had safely debated the concept of death and the immortality of the soul with her fellows, to admit she had never known anyone to actually die. "It will take some time," the solicitor, who was called Mr. Reed, said kindly. "And yes, I do give such news from time to time. Usually in situations in which the deceased does not have much family." I nearly opened my mouth to protest: But Toby has family. He had his brother, my father. But perhaps Mr. Reed meant a wife, children. Toby had never had those. And why count family one didn't speak to? "Does my father know?" I asked. "Yes. I cabled him yesterday." Mr. Reed gave me a calm, lawyerly regard, stern but not without gentleness. It was well perfected for a man under forty. "I've come, Miss Leigh, to tell you there is a great deal to be done. Do you understand?" I nodded, awash with relief. "Yes,