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Book of the Month

A reason to read...

An intoxicating and suspenseful mystery, an unforgettable story of love and grief that explores the way our fears blur the line between the real and the imagined.

The Lamplighters

The Lamplighters - Emma Stonex

They say we'll never know what happened to those men. They say the sea keeps its secrets...

Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped.

The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts.

Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves? Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on. Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them.

He wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. But only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface...

Inspired by real events, The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is an intoxicating and suspenseful mystery, an unforgettable story of love and grief that explores the way our fears blur the line between the real and the imagined.

£14.99

£12.15

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Meet the Author

Emma Stonex

Emma Stonex was born in 1983 and grew up in Northamptonshire, about as far from the sea as it’s possible to be in the UK. Her love affair with lighthouses and the coast began with childhood holidays to Cornwall and the Isle of Wight, which remain among her favourite places to visit.

Before becoming a writer, Emma worked as an editor in publishing, and is happiest when correcting punctuation (these days her own) with a new red pen. Ahead of The Lamplighters, she wrote several books under pseudonyms, but saved her real name for the story that had always been in her heart: the real-life mystery of three lighthouse keepers who vanished from their rock light in 1900 and to this day have never been found.

She’s fascinated by the little-known-about occupation of lighthouse keeping, and the psychology of the people involved. What did it take to live on a tower station, in the middle of the sea, for eight weeks at a time? What was it like for the families left at home?

Emma’s own home is in Bristol, where she lives with her husband and two young daughters, in a house steadily filling with lighthouse memorabilia.