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The Darker the Past, the Deeper the Secrets

Kit Parry is a woman with a past, albeit one she'd rather forget. Now a successful engineer, she's spent all her adult life trying to erase the memory of what happened over the long, hot summer of her fourteenth year. When she takes a job shoring up the ancient quarries under her hometown of Bath, however, the secrets she tried so desperately to bury threaten to work their way to the surface. For beneath its sleepy facade, the old spa town is as riddled with unwanted memories as it is with Roman ruins!

But if Kit's past holds untold terrors, her present has its own problems. Her ex-husband is tapping her for money, the miners resent her and someone is making it menacingly obvious that she isn't wanted in Bath. To top it off, her burgeoning romance with Gary, the quarry foreman, is threatening to force open doors to the past that Kit is determined to keep shut. When she stumbles across evidence of what could be the archaeological discovery of the decade: a lost Roman temple dedicated to the mystery cult of Mithras; the enigma in her past becomes entangled with a present-day race to discover the secret at the heart of the stone mines, a quest that turns into a dangerous obsession.

As Kit's story plays itself out in the dark labyrinth of tunnels beneath the ancient city, events race to a chilling climax in which past and present collide with disastrous effect. For when the walls Kit built to protect herself come crashing down, she must face the truth she's spent her whole life avoiding; and which threatens to destroy her.

Ingenious, well-plotted and...really holds the attention. it's a damn good read - Susan Hill

An amazingly accomplished first novel - intricately plotted and with a terrific, engaging protagonst. Anyone who has so much as a hint of claustrophobia or fear of pot holes should read it only in daylight with the windows open - Jenni Murray

Jenni has worked in broadcasting as a presenter and producer with BBC Radio Four and in television as a director, for both ITV and the BBC, making award-winning programmes about human relationships, as well as several on landscape archaeology and history. She lives in the West of England.