The Secrets of Thistle Cottage – A gripping and emotional historical novel (Paperback)

Our summary description

As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.

North Berwick, 1661. During a night of wind and rain, healer Honor Seton and her daughter Alice are called to a great house too late to save a dying woman. Grief curdles into blame, and the town’s unease finds an easy target. Rumour spreads quickly in a place where fear already has a name, and the Seton women feel the weight of suspicion settle around them.

Centuries later, Tess Blyth arrives in the same town carrying a different kind of disgrace. Fleeing Edinburgh after her husband’s downfall, she takes refuge in Thistle Cottage, hoping anonymity might offer relief. Instead, she discovers how quickly judgment travels, and how cruelty adapts to its time.

The Secrets of Thistle Cottage moves between past and present, attentive to how communities choose who belongs and who must be cast out. Set against a familiar stretch of Scottish coast, the novel explores the persistence of accusation and the damage it leaves behind. Some histories refuse to stay buried. Others wait patiently for the right moment to be repeated.