The Secret of the Journal

The Secret of the Journal follows Cambridge historian Emma D’Eresby after her research into a seventeenth-century diary takes her to a university in Maine. There she meets the surgeon Matthew Lynes, whose apparent age and carefully guarded family history are incompatible with the evidence contained in the journal. Their relationship develops through stalking, violence and discoveries that make the past an immediate danger rather than an academic subject.

Across five novels, Emma moves between Maine and England while uncovering the origins and consequences of Matthew’s unnatural longevity. His descendants, enemies and former relationships complicate any ordinary future together, and the diary becomes evidence sought by people prepared to use or destroy them. The sequence combines contemporary romantic suspense, Gothic mystery and a Stuart-period historical strand, ending with Emma and Matthew’s family pursued by an enemy who understands the secret they have protected.