5 Kate Morton-Approved Novels That Explore Past and Present

August 1 2016
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Editor’s Note: We’re huge fans of bestselling author Kate Morton’s novels—and in particular how her books weave together different periods of time—taking her readers from prewar manor houses that are filled with secrets back to present day—seamlessly. There’s a mystery at the heart of all her books, often one that hinges on past and present. We were curious about the kind of novels she reads in her free time. It’s no surprise that Kate Morton’s favorite books are steeped in the spellbinding secrets of the past and the exciting revelations of the future.

And now, in her own words and from her own bookshelf, we are honored to share five of Kate Morton’s favorite reads.

The Forgetting Time
by Sharon Guskin

The premise is irresistible: a single mum whose little boy suffers nightmares and keeps asking when he can go home. The only problem is, he’s already there. Determined to find out what’s happening, she teams up with a professor of psychology whose lifetime obsession with things unseen has alienated him from his colleagues. Their search leads them to the door of a woman whose son has been missing for eight years and, finally, answers seem close at hand. Part mystery and part meditation on a mother’s love for her child, this clever, heartfelt book kept me turning pages long into the night.

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The Forgetting Time
Sharon Guskin

The premise is irresistible: a single mum whose little boy suffers nightmares and keeps asking when he can go home. The only problem is, he’s already there. Determined to find out what’s happening, she teams up with a professor of psychology whose lifetime obsession with things unseen has alienated him from his colleagues. Their search leads them to the door of a woman whose son has been missing for eight years and, finally, answers seem close at hand. Part mystery and part meditation on a mother’s love for her child, this clever, heartfelt book kept me turning pages long into the night.

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5 Kate Morton-Approved Novels That Explore Past and Present

By Kate Morton | August 1, 2016

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In Falling Snow
by Mary-Rose MacColl

A beautifully written novel combining three of my favorite things: history, mystery, and memory. An elderly woman called Iris receives an invitation to the reunion of a group of nurses who operated a hospital in France during the First World War. We know immediately that something happened back then that makes Iris reluctant to attend, and soon learn that she’s been keeping a deep secret for a very long time. Luckily for us, the invitation’s arrival jolts Iris’s memory and takes us with her into the past where MacColl brings wartime France to vivid life.

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In Falling Snow
Mary-Rose MacColl

A beautifully written novel combining three of my favorite things: history, mystery, and memory. An elderly woman called Iris receives an invitation to the reunion of a group of nurses who operated a hospital in France during the First World War. We know immediately that something happened back then that makes Iris reluctant to attend, and soon learn that she’s been keeping a deep secret for a very long time. Luckily for us, the invitation’s arrival jolts Iris’s memory and takes us with her into the past where MacColl brings wartime France to vivid life.

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5 Kate Morton-Approved Novels That Explore Past and Present

By Kate Morton | August 1, 2016

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A Dark-Adapted Eye
by Ruth Rendell

Barbara Vine is the mistress of the psychological mystery. Her stories weave between the present and the past, and center on a secret that refuses to stay hidden. A DARK-ADAPTED EYE opens in the viewpoint of a girl called Faith who’s sitting in the kitchen of her parents’ house, waiting for something terrible to happen. We soon realize that Faith’s aunt Vera is to be put to death that morning for the murder of her beloved younger sister, Eden. The rest of the book, set in England during the Second World War, seeks to uncover why.

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A Dark-Adapted Eye
Ruth Rendell

The first novel written under Rendell’s nom de plume, Barbara Vine. When Faith Severn’s aunt was hanged for murder, the reason behind her dark deed died with her. For thirty years, the family hid the truth—until a journalist prompts Faith to look back to the day when her aunt entered a child’s nursery with a knife.

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Rebecca
by Daphne Du Maurier

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .” It’s one of the best first lines ever, and Manderley, the house at the story’s heart, is a magnificent creation, a place of menace and foreboding (not least due to its keeper, Mrs. Danvers), based on the real life Cornish house, Menabilly, with which du Maurier was fascinated. I love books where the house is a character, especially when it keeps a deep, dark secret. For its brooding atmosphere and tangible sense of place, this suspenseful mystery about the haunting of the present by the past is one of my favorites.

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Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier

I watched the classic Hitchcock film of Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic masterpiece starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine for the first time in years the other night, and in loving it was reminded of how much I also loved the book. Is there a first line of a novel more evocative than “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again”? Only Hitchcock could do justice to the moodiness and plot twists of Du Maurier’s genius work.

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The Go-Between
by L.P. Hartley

A man looks back on his life to remember the hot English summer of 1900 when, as a schoolboy, he went to stay with a friend in a grand country house and found himself acting as the go-between for a pair of star-crossed lovers. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” is the famous opening line, and, as the novel progresses, this statement plays out with devastating consequences. Not a mystery so much as a tragedy, THE GO-BETWEEN is elegantly written and has a strong sense of place; most satisfying of all, there’s a perfect inevitability to the unfolding story and its ultimate conclusion.

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The Go-Between
L.P. Hartley

A man looks back on his life to remember the hot English summer of 1900 when, as a schoolboy, he went to stay with a friend in a grand country house and found himself acting as the go-between for a pair of star-crossed lovers. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” is the famous opening line, and, as the novel progresses, this statement plays out with devastating consequences. Not a mystery so much as a tragedy, THE GO-BETWEEN is elegantly written and has a strong sense of place; most satisfying of all, there’s a perfect inevitability to the unfolding story and its ultimate conclusion.

Amazon logo Audible logo Barnes & Noble logo Books a Million logo iBooks logo

MENTIONED IN:

5 Kate Morton-Approved Novels That Explore Past and Present

By Kate Morton | August 1, 2016

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