The Distant Hours

London: Pan. Very Good. 2011. Reprint; First Printing. Paperback. 131 X 43 X 196 millimeters . Light reading and cover corner creases, light shelf wear with slight loss to cover gilding, slightly cocked spine, light foxing to endpapers and edges of reading block. ; First printing of Pan paperback edition with full number line, 2011. Nice tight copy, no names inside. Cover design by publisher with photo courtesy of The Garden Picture Library; Benjamin Harte/Arcangel Images; Harold Taylor/Getty Images with lettering by Steven Raw. Very heavy book and priced accordingly. ; 678 pages; Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close but, when a long-lost letter arrives with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen-year-old girl, Edie's mother was chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe and taken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family. Fifty years later, Edie, too, is drawn to Milderhurst and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiancé in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother's past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. .