The Bequest
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Named a "Most Anticipated" October Thriller by Bustle, PopSugar, & CrimeReads
After her professor’s suspicious death, a PhD student uncovers dark machinations among her academic associates in this "richly atmospheric and irresistibly readable" (Joyce Carol Oates) Gothic mystery set between Scotland, Italy, and France.
Fleeing a disastrous affair with a colleague in Boston, Isabel Henley moves to Scotland to begin a PhD with a renowned feminist professor—only to learn, upon arrival, that her advisor has suffered a deadly fall. Soon after, Isabel is informed that another scholar at the university is about to publish a book on her dissertation topic, leaving her disconcerted and in search of a new subject, all while struggling to acclimate to her new home abroad.
Isabel needs a good friend during such a rocky start, and finds one when she reconnects with Rose Brewster, her charismatic classmate from undergrad. But when Rose confides to Isabel that she is in trouble, and then goes missing, Isabel’s already-unsteady life is sent into a tailspin. A suicide note surfaces, followed by a coded message: Rose is alive but, unless Isabel can complete the research begun before her friend’s disappearance, both women will be killed by her captors.
As Isabel follows the Rose’s paper trail from Genoa to Florence and, finally, to Paris, she uncovers family secrets, the legend of an enormous cursed emerald, and a chain of betrayal and treason which parallels her own perilous present. If she can put the pieces together soon, she could solve a 400-year-old mystery—and save her and her friend’s lives in the process.
Combining epistolary elements, Gothic suspense, and an atmospheric “dark academia” setting, The Bequest is a gripping literary thriller that will appeal to fans of Alex Michaelides’ The Maidens and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
PhD candidate Isabel Henley, the narrator of Margaret's impressive if flawed debut, follows her older college chum, Rose Brewster, to Scotland's St. Stephens University, where she learns that the rock-star feminist scholar who was to be her thesis adviser has just died in a hiking accident. Flash forward a few months. Only the occasional outing with Rose or fantasizing about a broodingly handsome young lecturer relieves the lonely Isabel's immersion in the lives of 16th-century monarch Catherine de' Medici and her female court. Rose's subsequent disappearance puts Isabel on the trail of a priceless emerald legend claims was brought from Brazil to Italy by the subject of Rose's dissertation, Catherine's courtier Federico Falcone. As Isabel embarks on a high-stakes intellectual treasure hunt that will take her from the Falcone family's Genoese palazzo to archives in Florence and Paris, the author not only maintains suspense but makes the historical figures come vibrantly alive through their correspondence. Indeed, the contemporary characters pale by comparison, and a couple of key figures swing wildly between winningly seductive and sociopathic, particularly as dictated by the hairpin turns of the far-fetched denouement. Despite such speed bumps, however, readers will eagerly await Margaret's next.
