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The perfect read for fans of Sunday night drama. Foyle´s War meets The Mitford Murders in this deliciously dark tale of wartime family secrets and lies in small town England.

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WINNER OF THE RICHARD & JUDY SEARCH FOR A BESTSELLER COMPETITION

April 1941, Romsey, England.

Josephine ´Jo´ Fox hasn´t set foot in Romsey in over twenty years. As an illegitimate child, her family - headed by her controlling grandfather - found her an embarrassment. Now, she wants to return to what was once her home and uncover the secret of her parentage. Who was her father and why would her mother never talk about him?

Jo arrives the day after the Luftwaffe have bombed the town. The local pub has been completely destroyed and rescue teams are searching for the remains of the seven people known to have been in the pub at the time the bomb hit. They are shocked, however, to uncover eight bodies instead. The eighth, unidentified, body is that of a teenage girl, who no one in the town claims to know. Who is she, how did she get there, but most importantly - who killed her?

Teaming up with local coroner and old friend, Bram Nash, Jo sets out to establish the identity of the girl and solve the riddle of her death. In doing so, she also uncovers her own personal mystery.

Everyone has secrets - some are just more deadly than others . . .

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The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox was a complete delight . The story sings with authenticity and I found myself transported to 1940s Romsey from the very first page. ´Josy´ is very much a woman ahead of her time and her voice brings heart, and often humour, to what is essentially a very dark mystery . Unputdownable Caz Frear, bestselling author of Sweet Little Lies, the previous R&J winner

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Gradidge, Claire
Claire Gradidge was born and brought up in Romsey. After a career as, among other things, a nurse and a school librarian, she went to the University of Winchester, where she graduated in 2009 with a first class honours BA in Creative Writing. In January 2018, she was awarded a PhD in creative writing and The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox was written as the creative element of her PhD study. An early version of the opening 3000 words was highly commended in the Good Housekeeping Magazine competition in 2012.

She has taught at the University of Winchester as an Associate Lecturer for six years and has also had some short fictions and poems published in South , Orbis and Vortex . She has been married for 40 years and has two adult sons.

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