"A novel" - cover.

2009: When Julia Conley learns that she has inherited a house outside London from an unknown great-aunt, she assumes its a joke. Wrapped up in her New York life, she hasn't been back to England since the car crash that killed her mother when she was six, an event she remembers only in her nightmares. But when she arrives at Herne Hill, however, to reluctantly sort through the house-with the help of her cousin Natasha and an attractive antiques dealer named Nicholas-bits of memory start coming back. Then she discovers a pre-Raphaelite painting, hidden behind the false back of an old wardrobe, and a window onto the house's shrouded history begins to open. 1849: Imogen Grantham has spent nearly a decade trapped in a loveless marriage to a much older man, Arthur. The one bright spot in her life is her step-daughter, Evie, a high-spirited sixteen-year-old who is the closest thing to a child Imogen hopes to have. But everything changes when three young painters come to see Arthur's collection of medieval artifacts.