Emma Brown - Clare Boylan (First edition)

When Charlotte Brontë died in 1855, she had begun a new novel. The two-chapter fragment introduced a lost girl and signalled the author's most compelling work since Jane Eyre. Now, almost 150 years later, Clare Boylan has returned to this intriguing beginning and turned it into an astonishing story of mystery, atmosphere and page-turning suspense.

The arrival of Conway Fitzgibbon at Fuchsia Lodge with his daughter Matilda is a source of delight to the headmistress, Miss Wilcox. The unsuccessful ladies' school is eager for new pupils, particularly one so finely dressed and boasting a father who is 'quite the gentleman'. But as Christmas approaches, and Miss Wilcox inquires about arrangements for the holidays, she is in for a shock. Conway Fitzgibbon, like the address he left behind, does not exist. 

So, who is the mysterious Matilda? With Miss Wilcox unable to extract an answer from the girl, it falls to a local gentleman, Mr Ellin, and a childless widow, Isabel Chalfont, to unravel the truth, an investigation that begins as curiosity and ends up changing all their lives forever.

With all the wit and pathos of its gifted originator Clare Boylan has seamlessly developed Brontë's story of a girl without a  past into a remarkable portrait of a Victorian society with a shameful secret at its heart.