The Secret of the Three Fates

The atmospheric sequel to Armstrong’s award-winning debut, The Curse of Penryth Hall, offers three eerie houses, witches, mediums, and the unexplained. Ruby Vaughn lost her entire family when the Lusitania was sunk, and then she worked as an ambulance driver during World War I. By 1922, she hopes to lead a quiet life running her Exter bookstore that bears the name of her octogenarian mentor, Mr. Owen. Then Mr. Owen asks Ruby to accompany him to Manfort Castle in Scotland to examine some illuminated manuscripts. She’s angry when she learns it’s a ruse; instead, he wants her to attend a séance conducted by a group of mediums called the Three Fates, in hopes of contacting his dead son. Despite events in her past, Ruby is unwilling to acknowledge the occult, but something shows up at the séance that night, and then one of the mediums is killed. Although Ruby attempted to save the woman, the police on the case see her as the primary suspect. She will have to uncover secrets from Mr. Owen’s past and work with folk healer and witch Ruan Kivell to find the medium’s real killer.