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    The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton: A Laurence Bartram Mystery
    Unavailable
    The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton: A Laurence Bartram Mystery
    Unavailable
    The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton: A Laurence Bartram Mystery
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton: A Laurence Bartram Mystery

    Written by Elizabeth Speller

    Narrated by Matthew Brenher

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When Great War veteran Laurence Bartram arrives in Easton Deadall, he is struck by the beauty of the place: a crumbling manor, a venerable church, and a memorial to the village's soldiers, almost all of whom died in one bloody battle. Now peace prevails, and the rest of England is newly alight with hope, but Easton Deadall remains haunted by tragedy - as does the Easton family. In 1911, five-year-old Kitty disappeared from her bed and has not been seen in thirteen years; only her fragile mother still believes she is alive. While Laurence is a guest of the manor, a young maid vanishes in a sinister echo of Kitty's disappearance. And when a body is discovered in the manor's ancient church, Laurence is drawn into the grounds' forgotten places, where deadly secrets lie in wait. A gorgeous restoration of the manor-house mystery, The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton is sure to entrance literary, historical, and crime fiction readers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJun 26, 2012
    ISBN9781611207453
    Unavailable
    The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton: A Laurence Bartram Mystery
    Author

    Elizabeth Speller

    Elizabeth Speller studied the classics at Cambridge University. She is the author of The First of July, The Return of Captain John Emmett, and The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton. She lives in England.

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    Reviews for The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      There seemed to be much going on with this, but I'm not sure it gelled successfully. But as with the preceding novel (Return of Capt John Emmett) the message about the destructive nature of WW1 on individuals, families and communities was loud and clear. I hope Lawrence Batram appears again.
    • 4/5
      What happened to 5 year old Kitty Easton who disappeared one night from her family's country estate, and why is everyone so haunted by this? A gentle mystery, well-plotted and well written, set after the Great War in England.
    • 3/5
      The follow up to The Return of Captain John Emmett, I really liked the 'John Emmett' read and 4 *ed it. In this, the sequel, the characters are not nearly as well drawn. I am very easily distracted from the story which does not really follow the former story at all except for the major character and one minor one. At this point I am very disappointed in the book but will finish it mainly to find out what did happen to 'Kitty Easton' and to finish the story line of the labyrinth/maze on the estate and the one found in the old church floor.
    • 4/5
      Laurence Bartram is getting accustomed to life after WWI, teaching and adjusting to life without his wife and newborn, who both died, and the woman he loves, who is separated from him while her husband, with no hope of recovery, clings to life.Laurence accepts the invitation of his friend William, a talented architect who lost the use of his legs in the war, to look over the restoration of a church on a country estate. William, his ardent political wife Eleanor, and their young son Nicholas are stayiing with the Eastons, a prototypical country gentry family riddled with tragedy and secrets.The tragedy that weighs heaviest on the family members is the disappearance of five-year-old Kitty more than 10 years ago. The lord of the manor, Digby, fell deeper into drink and tyrannical ways after the child vanished from her room one night. He was killed in France, while younger brother Julian survived to carry on at home. He pines for Digby's widow, Lydia, who is becoming more frail by the day and who cannot acknowledge her daughter may be dead. Youngest brother Patrick plays the role of ne'er-do-well, but his story, like that of all the Eastons, is deeper than first appearances.It takes pages and pages for anything to really happen, but the church restoration -- and underground discoveries -- and an ill-fated trip to a London exhibition are trigger events that eventually bring to light most of the Easton secrets. Speller's second Laurence Bartram novel is leisurely paced, better reflecting an era when people counted time in days and weeks, rather than minutes, and no one multi-tasked. The pacing highlights how events large and small could have lasting effects on the characters. The characters demonstrate qualities that may seem quaint today -- loyalty, thoughtfulness, reluctance to gossip but truthfulness when asked forthright.The novel does require knowledge of characters from the first Laurence Bartram novel. Like this one, The Return of Captain John Emmett uses the crime fiction genre to explore how a people try to return to a way of life after war nearly destroys it. Laurence's decisions at the end of Kitty Easton portend interesting possibilities for continuing the series, as do the actions of other returning characters.
    • 4/5
      I love the way this author writes, and I loved her last book. She has wonderful sense of time and place and it is easy to become totally immersed in this time period. I did feel, however, that this book would have been better had it been about 100 pgs. shorter. I realize that these atmospheric, character based mysteries take longer to create but very little happens for the first 100 pgs. or so. Once things happen, revelations come quickly and the story is outstanding. I am glad I stuck with as I was rewarded by the end of the book. Look forward to this authors next outing.
    • 4/5
      This was JUST the book I needed when I read it. I’d had a couple of DNFs and one of those put some truly despicable people and deeds into my head so I needed something that I could relax into. It seems the author felt the same when writing the story; she eases into it with a decent set-up and no obvious bad guy. The action takes place over months and has plenty of atmosphere, but still keeps things interesting.There are a couple of recurring motifs in the book; one is World War I and the other is mazes or labyrinths which affect our hero Laurence very badly because of their similarity to the hideous trenches of that war. It isn’t all dark and misery though; the war imagery is done with spare, but affecting prose which the author wisely reins in so that it doesn’t become a huge downer. It is poignant though and I found her treatment to be in good taste, but acute just the same. This is as much a novel about that war as it is about the fate of Kitty Easton.The maze bits are a great hook and are used very well in the story. Patrick, the youngest of the Easton brothers is an archaeologist recently returned from Crete, the site of the maze of mazes; the Labyrinth at Knossos. Combined with William’s commission to create a new maze on the estate and the mosaic in the church; the mazes keep teasing us with their secrets and it’s not surprising how deep they go with regard to Easton Deadall. Many comparisons have been made between this book and Agatha Christie’s manor-house mysteries and Speller acknowledges her literary forbear by having Laurence read Murder on the Links on the sly. He seems embarrassed by it and I think that reflected the attitude of the time which held that mystery novels were quite lowbrow. There is a lot of propriety clinging to how people interact; I loved how none of them could bring themselves to say syphilis. It reminded me that my Pepere couldn’t say pregnant. He’d always say “in the family way”. There aren’t many surprises in the book because I read a lot of this kind of thing and because there’s a lot of hinting done by the author. Suspicions abound, but the fate of Kitty Easton is something I didn’t predict. It’s bittersweet and I thought it wrapped up well. I am going to read the first book in this series both because I liked this one and because of what was alluded to about what happened in that book. I hope Ms. Speller writes more.
    • 4/5
      I was both charmed and moved by Elizabeth Speller’s first novel, The Return of Captain John Emmett.I hadn’t expected to the man who had led me through that story again, but when I picked up The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton I found that I would.Six years after the end of the Great War Lawrence Bartram was travelling to the Wiltshire village of Easton Deadall, to help and support an old friend who had been commissioned to create a war memorial.Because nearly all of the men of the village had joined up together, and they had died together too.But a shadow had hung over the village, and the Easton family who lived in the manor house, long before the war. Because five year-old Kitty Easton had disappeared from her home years before, leaving no trace.And then Kitty’s father died in the war, leaving his widow holding the family estate in trust, for the missing daughter she could not believe to be dead.She was supported by her sister, by the family’s loyal staff, and maybe by her husband’s two younger brothers.For a while the story moves slowly as Elizabeth Speller paints this picture, of places, of lives, of relationships. She writes beautifully, and every detail, every nuance is right.And, in time, a plot begins to build. A village child slips away from a group on an outing, and the search for year uncovers a woman’s body on the estate. And maybe that disappearance, that death, are related to the earlier disappearance of Kitty Easton.Lawrence, as the outsider, the neutral party, becomes the confidante of many, and he begins to investigate.Eventually all questions would be answered, and answered well.Those questions, and the facts that emerged, were intriguing, but this book held much more than mysteries. It was a human story, with characters and relationships quite beautifully drawn.And, though the story was set in England after the Great War, its themes were timeless.You see, it was a story that said a great deal. About how we deal with grief, and how it changes our futures. About the secrets we keep behind the faces we present to the world. And about how much we will do to protect the people and things we love.The ending left a lump in my throat.Because the answer to the question of Kitty’s disappearance was so unexpected, and yet so right.And because I had seen Lawrence, the man who had been paralysed by the loss of his wife and child when we first met, coming out of himself just a little more, accepting that he had to go on living.And the hints about what his future might hold were very interesting.I suspect that we will meet again. I do hope so.
    • 4/5
      THE STRANGE FATE OF KITTY EASTON (Mystery Fiction, 1920s England) 3.5 star ratingThis is the highly anticipated sequel to The Return of Captain John Emmett which was a great success in 2011. WWI veteran Lawrence Bertram returns in his role of a gentleman in reduced circumstances and accepts an invitation of an old friend to spend some time at his country estate. Once there, he learns that several years before, six-year-old Kitty Easton, heiress of the house, had disappeared under mysterious circumstances.I greatly enjoyed the setting, and very much like Lawrence, but I found the mystery meandered just a little much. I’m undecided as to whether I’d read a sequel.Read this if: you enjoy the 1920s English country house setting. 3½ stars