Untitled Caroline Lea 2025

Untitled Caroline Lea 2025

Summary

May 1816, Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva.

Mary Shelley, eighteen-years-old, has fled London with her lover Percy Shelley and her pregnant, unwed sister, Claire. Mary is tormented by Shelley's infidelities, haunted by the loss of their baby daughter and suspicious of her sister's intensions.

Geneva promises a new start.

But far from being a refuge, the summer is freakishly cold and stormy, skies shrouded with volcanic ash, the villa enveloped in superstition. Mary finds herself trapped in an endless cycle - dark afternoons of spirit-raising and ether-taking with their glamorous neighbour, Lord Byron. and his handsome but unnerving doctor, Polidori.

Once Byron proposes a ghost-story contest, an even stranger atmosphere descends. One in which passion mingles with fear, and the living confront the dead.

Reviews

  • An absolutely gripping novel about the choices women face - and the choices they are denied
    Elodie Harper

About the author

Caroline Lea

Caroline Lea grew up on the island of Jersey. The Glass Woman, her debut, is a gothic thriller set during the Icelandic witch trials. The Metal Heart, a Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month, is an epic Second World War love story; Prize Women reveals a feminist scandal at the heart of the roaring 20s. Her latest novel reimagines Mary Shelley and the writing of Frankenstein.
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