Mary’s designs weren’t being accepted in the man’s world of silk, but she wouldn’t give up.

Mary-Louise Stephenson and her sister Frances struggled to make ends meet in their home in London. Rowan could see the mistress was unhappy, and noticed the master was rarely home. The household was small with Prudence the cook, Alice a house maid and now Rowan. Rowan had needed work to provide for her three younger brothers while they lived with their aunt and uncle, since their parents had died. It was the late 1760s when a young Rowan Caswell was hired as house maid at the home of Patrick and Caroline Hollander, in their home beside the business where the finest silks were procured. Intoxicating, haunting and inspired by the author's background, THE SILK HOUSE is the exceptional new gothic mystery by Kayte Nunn. Arriving in the market town of Oxleigh, she brings with her a length of fabric woven with a pattern of deadly plants that will have far-reaching consequences for all who dwell in the silk house. In London, Mary-Louise Stephenson lives amid the clatter of the weaving trade and dreams of becoming a silk designer, a job that is the domain of men. She is thrust into a new and dangerous world where her talent for herbs and healing soon attracts attention.

In the late 1700s, Rowan Caswell leaves her village to work in the home of an English silk merchant. She is to stay with them in Silk House, a building with a long and troubled past, where the shadows hide more mysteries than she could ever imagine. The spellbinding story of a mysterious boarding school sheltering a centuries-old secret by the bestselling author of THE BOTANIST'S DAUGHTER.Īustralian history teacher Thea Rust arrives at an exclusive boarding school in the British countryside only to find that she is to look after the first intake of girls in its 150-year history.

Kayte nunn the silk house