"Finely observed, beautifully written" Daily Mail on The Secrets of Life and Death

"The victim had been buried in a carved hollow in the grass and shrouded in fallen leaves..."

Archaeologist Sage Westfield has her first forensics case: investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Hidden by holly leaves, the girl's body has been discovered on the grounds of a stately home, where another teenage girl went missing twenty years ago - but her body was never found. The police suspect the reclusive owner, Alistair Chorleigh, who was questioned but never charged. But when Sage investigates a nearby burial mound - and uncovers rumours of an ancient curse - she discovers the story of another mysterious disappearance over a hundred years ago. Sage will need both her modern forensics skills and her archaeological knowledge to unearth the devastating truth.

Rebecca Alexander is a psychologist and writer. Rebecca wrote her first book aged nineteen, and since then has been runner up in the Mslexia novel writing competition and the Yeovil Literary Prize 2012. She is the author of the Jackdaw Hammond series of supernatural crime novels published by Del Rey, The Secrets of Life and Death (2013), The Secrets of Blood and Bone (2014) and The Secrets of Time and Fate (2016). She lives in Devon.