The Key

'Riveting' Lesley Pearse on The Letter. 'Gripping' Good Housekeeping on The Secret.

From Kathryn Hughes, the #1 bestselling author of The Letter and The Secret, comes a powerful, shocking, heartbreaking story set to get everyone talking in spring 2018.

1956
It's Ellen Crosby's first day at work as a student nurse at Fairhaven County Lunatic Asylum. When she meets Amy Sullivan, a young woman committed for allegedly attempting to drown herself and her stepsister, and Dr Stephen Lambourn, a pioneering physician keen to try out the various 'cures' available for mental illness, little does Ellen know that a choice she will make is to change all their lives irrevocably...

Present day
Under the cover of darkness, a young woman, Kate, picks her way through the brambles to the abandoned Fairhaven Asylum. A vast building with over six miles of corridors, the asylum still houses the metal-framed beds, rusty instruments and infamous padded cells used before it closed its doors for the last time. In an old wardrobe, Kate discovers a suitcase belonging to a female patient who was admitted to the asylum in 1956. The shocking contents of the suitcase lead Kate to unravel a forgotten story of tragedy, lost love and an old wrong that only Kate may have the power to put right.