The Bone Flower

On a November evening in Victorian London, the moneyed but listless Edward Monteith stokes the fire at his local gentleman's club, listening to stories of supernatural experiences and theories of life after death.His curiosity leads him to a seance, where he falls under the spell of a beautiful flower seller. But Victorian society does not look kindly on love between a gentleman of means and a Romani girl, and when he faces being cut off by his family, Edward makes a decision with horrifying consequences.Two years later Edward is married and anticipating the birth of his first child, in a beautiful house lined with orange blossom trees. But the wrongs of the past are not so easily forgotten, and the boundary between the living and the dead begins to thin...A deliciously chilling Gothic novel, The Bone Flower is a deeply human story about guilt, betrayal and the cruelty of social expectations.

Charles Lambert is the author of several novels, short stories, and the memoir With a Zero at its Heart, which was voted one of The Guardian readers' Ten Best Books of the Year in 2014.In 2007, he won an O. Henry Award for his short story The Scent of Cinnamon. His first novel, Little Monsters, was longlisted for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Born in England, Charles Lambert has lived in central Italy since 1980.