To Sleep No More

In the fourteenth century, Oriel de Sharndene, the beautiful daughter of a Sussex landowner, is married off to the retarded brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury; three centuries later, Jenna Mist, wife of the village carpenter, is hanged for witchcraft; in the eighteenth century, a highwayman captures the love of the delightful Henrietta Trevor - three apparently unconnected events. This panoramic novel skilfully interweaves past and present, fact and fiction, exploring the enigma of reincarnation through the ages.

Set in the village of Mayfield in Sussex, To Sleep No More opens in the tumultuous reign of Edward III when monarch and Church struggled for supremacy and ambitious noblemen aimed to better themselves by marrying their daughters well. Oriel accepts the Archbishop's half-witted brother Colin de Stratford to please her father but soon falls in love with the dashing Gascon squire, Marcus de Flaviel. A strange and touching friendship develops between the three but, when Oriel becomes pregnant, suspicions are aroused and Marcus disappears without trace.

But their souls cannot rest and the story follows them through the times of witchcraft persecution under James I to the troubled Georgian period when highwaymen and smugglers held sway.