Author: Coughlan, Claire
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Published on 1 February 2024 by Simon & Schuster Ltd in the United Kingdom.
Hardback | 384 pages
161 x 242 x 33 | 558g
'A thrillingly dark and atmospheric tale, richly evocative of its time' JOHN BANVILLE 'This isn't just a mystery novel: it's a window into a vanished world' TANA FRENCHÂ 'Gripping and brilliantly atmospheric'Â RODDY DOYLESome stories demand to be told. They keep coming back, echoing down through the decades, until they find a teller . . .
Dublin, 1943 Actress Julia Bridges disappears.
The last sighting of her is entering the house of Gloria Fitzpatrick, who is later put on trial for the murder of another woman whose abortion she facilitated.
But it’s never proved that Gloria had a hand in Julia’s death – and Julia’s body has never been found.
Gloria, however, is sentenced to life in an institution for the criminally insane, until her apparent suicide a few years later, and the truth of what happened to Julia Bridges dies with her.
 Dublin, 1968 Nicoletta Sarto is an ambitious junior reporter for the Irish Sentinel when the bones of Julia Bridges are discovered in the garden of a house on the outskirts of Dublin.
Drawn into investigating the 25-year-old mystery of Julia’s disappearance and her link to the notorious Gloria Fitzpatrick, the story takes Nicoletta into the tangled underworld of the illegal abortion industry, stirring up long-buried secrets from her own past.
As much a murder mystery story as a look at a young woman’s struggle to succeed in a man’s world, Where They Lie is a beautifully atmospheric debut that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
'Atmospheric and absorbing, an ambitious young journalist finds herself at the heart of a corkscrew tale she never knew existed. A dark and turbulent journey to unexpected truths’ VAL McDERMID ‘A dark, gorgeously-written thriller, its tap root deep in a past so vividly evoked, you can see and smell and feel it’ NICCI FRENCH ‘Atmospheric, authentic, and almost unbearably poignant. Like the best historical fiction, Where They Lie transports the reader back in time while holding up a mirror to the present. A must-read’ ERIN KELLY Â