Time's Prisoner
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The Wyngrave Women - Book One
The dead are invisible. They are not absent.
With her personal and professional life in ruins, Jane Summers, author of historical whodunnits, receives an extraordinary bequest from an old enemy. But there’s a condition attached. If she is to become more than just a sitting tenant at Wyngrave Hall, a crumbling Elizabethan manor house, Jane must solve a centuries-old mystery.
She invites a motley crew of women to share her new life at the Hall: Rosamund, a tough but troubled nurse; Sylvia, retired actress and national treasure; loyal Bridget, gardener and handywoman, who knows the chequered history of Wyngrave Hall and understood the selfish eccentricities of its previous owner.
But unknown to the women of Wyngrave Hall, there is another, unseen occupant, one with a desperate agenda: to enlist Jane’s help solving the coldest of cold cases.
“I’d gone to great lengths to avoid the lonely life of a middle-aged, reclusive divorcée, but it was some time before I admitted to myself, I disliked spending a day working at home on my own, not because I feared to be alone in the ancient house, but because I feared I wasn’t…”
TIME’S PRISONER & HIDDEN: Sibling Novels.
Observant readers will spot similarities between TIME’S PRISONER and my previous novel, HIDDEN: the setting, the hidden journal, a woman held prisoner in her own home. There are others which I won’t mention to avoid spoilers.
I wasn’t trying to clone an earlier success. There's a reason for the similarities. About six years ago my novel-in-progress bore a strong resemblance to TIME’S PRISONER. While I was working on this novel, I was approached by Amazon’s publishing imprint, Lake Union. They wanted to re-publish one of my popular indie novels, THE TRYSTING TREE. (They did. It was re-named THE MEMORY TREE and became a Kindle bestseller in Historical Fiction.)
The editor asked what else I was writing. I told her about the novel I was working on, which at the time was called PRISONER OF THE PAST. It wasn’t what she was looking for, but she asked if I could come up with anything else, so I abandoned my work-in-progress, took it apart and recycled much of it to create a new novel I eventually called HIDDEN.
Unfortunately, when complete, this book didn’t meet with editorial approval and I was asked to completely re-write it. By now I’d had enough of writing to order and I decided I would go back to being my own boss. I published HIDDEN in 2020, knowing that I'd set aside a promising story and a memorable main character (Horatio Fortune) for commercial rather than artistic reasons.
Resuming the earlier book was now problematic because so much had been recycled for HIDDEN. I set about writing a very different book, returning to the historical period I knew well - World War I - and which I’d used for THE GLASS GUARDIAN, THE MEMORY TREE and HIDDEN. But after I’d written 25,000 words (about a quarter of the average novel), I set the draft aside, finally convinced that even it was never published, the book I really wanted to write was the mysterious story of “The Brief Life and Ignominious Death of Horatio Fortune, Actor”.
Poor Horatio has waited six years to make his entrance. I hope when they read TIME'S PRISONER, his audience will think it was worth the wait.
Dowland, Denmark and Hamlet
An author writes many more words than the ones that are finally published. Interesting titbits of research are often deleted - often reluctantly - because they interest the author far more than the reader. I cut the following dialogue between the heroine, Jane and the half-Danish hero, Jesper because it didn’t further the story, but I'm including it here because the content was surprising and fun.
My research source was SCANDINAVIANS: In Search of the Soul of the North by Robert Ferguson.
‘Do you know about Hamlet, Dowland and Denmark?’ Jesper asked. ‘The tradition – quite unjustified – of the gloomy, depressed Dane and who’s responsible for that? Or might be?’
‘No. I’m a fan of Dowland’s music but I don’t know much about him.’
‘Nobody does, but it’s highly likely he knew Shakespeare and some scholars think Shakespeare’s ideas about Denmark and the Danish temperament were supplied by John Dowland – singer, composer, lutenist and possibly Catholic spy.’
‘Did Dowland know Denmark, then?’
‘Oh, yes. He was working in Denmark round about the time Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, but Dowland kept going back and forth, getting things published, and maybe met Shakespeare in London.’
‘What was Dowland doing in Denmark?’
‘Conducting the Royal Danish Orchestra. He was a musician at the court of King Christian IV in Elsinore. It’s the oldest orchestra in the world, founded in 1448. Dowland spent eight years in Copenhagen and was paid a huge amount of money. He was Number 140.’
‘He had a number?’
‘Everyone was assigned a number. They still are. Will Kempe was No. 56.’
‘The Will Kempe?’ I laughed. ‘Jesper, how do you know all this?’
‘One of the Copenhagen Cousins is a member of the orchestra. I don’t remember her number, I’m afraid. There are well over a thousand now.’
‘And you say Dowland is responsible for the gloomy Dane stereotype?’
‘It’s possible. Danes certainly don’t see themselves reflected in Hamlet. Dowland however, is synonymous with heartbroken, self-indulgent melancholy. If Shakespeare had asked him about Denmark, he might have shared his own negative view of the country and its people. But if Dowland had been employed by the French court, he might have projected the same negative view onto that country. Shakespeare had never been to Denmark – well, there’s no evidence he had – but he might have sat in a tavern with Dowland, sinking a lugubrious pint of ale, picking the depressive’s brains about the Danish court and the national character... And thus, perhaps, was the stereotype of The Melancholy Dane born.’
The Language of The Lamentations
To create The Lamentations, excerpts from a fictional secret journal written in 1603, I borrowed from a variety of sources. Depending on how familiar you are with 16th and 17th century literature, you might spot examples from, or hear echoes of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, John Donne’s poems, John Dowland’s song lyrics and the 1611 King James Bible.
Modernising all spellings for clarity, I constructed a patchwork of Tudor and Jacobean language which might not be historically authentic, but creates, I hope, the illusion of a poignant and desperate journal written in captivity four centuries ago.
This is one of my sources: a despairing song lyric (1610) by John Dowland, here with its original spelling...
In darknesse let mee dwell, the ground shall sorrow be,
The roofe Dispaire to barr all cheerfull light from mee,
The wals of marble blacke that moistned still shall weepe,
My musicke hellish jarring sounds to banish friendly sleepe.
Thus wedded to my woes, and bedded to my Tombe,
O let me living die, till death, till death do come.
TIME'S TYRANNY - Book Two of The Wyngrave Women
TIME'S TYRANNY, the captivating sequel to TIME'S PRISONER was published in April 2025.
1934
Hidden under the bed in her father’s studio, five-year-old Emerald Heskett watches as the picture gradually disappears, obliterated by white paint. The child doesn’t understand what she’s witnessed, but gives the new painting a name: The Snowstorm.
2020
The first lockdown is over and the women of Wyngrave Hall are coming to terms with their new lives. Retired actress, Sylvia Marlowe, now blind, cannot see or even touch her granddaughter, Ros, a nurse living in isolation in a cottage in the grounds. Her partner, Bridget, begs Ros to quit before she, too, becomes a Covid statistic. Jane Summers, owner of sixteenth-century Wyngrave and author of historical whodunnits, hasn’t seen Jesper Olsen, art conservator, since he locked down with his frail and difficult mother.
At Howthwaite Castle in Cumbria, Bella Heskett and her brother, Nick care for elderly Cousin Em as they struggle to transform the roofless ruin of their family home and its abandoned gardens into a tourist attraction. When Nick asks his old friend Jesper to visit and assess some damaged paintings, he persuades Jane to go with him to Howthwaite where they encounter the enigma of The Snowstorm and Em’s curious attachment to it. But despite their passionate reunion, when Jane learns the truth about Jesper’s past, she questions their future together.
Nick gathered up the incriminating letters, replaced them in his father’s desk and locked it, though he wasn’t sure who needed to be protected from the contents. Cousin Em would never know and Bella wouldn’t care. Nick had never asked himself why his mother drank, or why his late brother took drugs, Hesketts didn’t ask questions. The family motto was “Perfer et obdura”. Persist and endure. But would Howthwaite endure...?
Why a Sequel? Why a Series?
Book bereavement. You knew there was such a thing because you've finished wonderful books, books that you felt you were living in, and then you felt bereft. At a loss. You couldn't think what to read next. So you started your next book but you were still thinking about the last...
Can you imagine how much worse it is if you've spent one, two or more years writing a book? Perhaps some overworked writers with pressing deadlines are glad to type THE END and see the back of their characters, but I've always experienced book bereavement. It was so bad after TIME'S PRISONER, I had to write a sequel.
I could have done that with several other books because I tend to leave endings a bit open - sometimes very open - and readers have often requested a sequel, perhaps because they feel bookishly-bereaved. But TIME'S TYRANNY is the first sequel I've written. I considered writing one for STAR GAZING and EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and I started writing a spin-off to CAULDSTANE in which the second hero, Rupert, the retired ghost-busting minister finds love, but I dropped it to write TIME'S PRISONER.
2024 was a very bad year for me, personally and in terms of my mental and physical health. There were several real bereavements, including two of my oldest and dearest friends. I did little other than get by and write TIME’S TYRANNY. I'm inclined to become immersed in whatever I'm writing and my characters become almost as real to me as living people. There were times towards the end of writing TIME'S TYRANNY when I walked into a room and was surprised (and disappointed) to find Jesper Olsen wasn't there.
I've always claimed that in a way your fictional characters seem more real to an author than friends and family because as their creator you're inside their heads. You might know your partner, friends or children very well, but you don't know what they're thinking, nor why they do what they do. You don't know exactly what they will say next. With characters you've created, you do.
Then when you've typed THE END, you feel as if you've dumped people, sometimes leaving them in a terrible state (eg TIME'S PRISONER and A LIFETIME BURNING). You get on with Real Life in a distracted sort of way, but you're wondering how - and if - your imaginary friends are managing.
I thought of bringing back ALB's musician anti-hero, Rory Dunbar, inserting him into the musical life of STAR GAZING’s Marianne, perhaps as a suitor for her. But when I started thinking it through and worked out how many years had passed since the end of ALB, I thought Rory would probably be dead. Unable to live without his sister (that's not a spoiler – she's dead on p.1), I felt pretty sure Rory would have taken his life since the book ended. I feel so responsible for my characters, but they can't all have happy endings – at least, not in the kind of books I write.
In a way I’m not surprised I’ve written several books that feature ghosts, characters who are ghost-like, or might be ghosts. I find I'm “haunted” by many of the characters I’ve created. I “hear” their voices and my job is to write down what they say. Sometimes I hear them long after the book is finished. The dialogue isn't always over.
The characters in TIME’S PRISONER haunted me and I felt compelled to write a sequel, TIME’S TYRANNY. That turned out to be a very long book, so I cut the final chapter which tied up loose ends. Then I realised that chapter was actually the beginning of a third book. It seemed that the characters in TIME'S PRISONER were going to continue to haunt me, especially Queenie Brooke-Bennet who never actually appeared again after the Prologue, but remained a presence throughout. She said it was time for her story to be told.
So now there will be a third book, as yet untitled, and The Wyngrave Women will become a series.