Elanor Dymott

“This is more than a murder mystery. It's an examination of the subjectivity of accounts of truth. It’s a desperately moving love story about a lonely man who finds salvation in another only to have the idyll destroyed. Finally, it’s a tale of revenge, served cold and deadly.” —Independent Elanor Dymott’s gorgeous debut tells the story of Alex, a solitary lawyer who has finally found love in the form of his beautiful wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one midsummer night on the grounds of their alma mater, Worcester College, Oxford, Alex’s life as he knows it vanishes. He returns to Oxford that winter and, through the shroud of his shock and grief, tries to piece together the mystery surrounding his wife’s death. Playing host to Alex’s winter visit is Harry, Rachel’s former tutor and trusted mentor, who turns out to have been involved in almost every significant development of their relationship. Alex also turns to Evie, Rachel’s self-centered and difficult godmother, whose jealousy of her charge has waxed and waned over the years. And then there are her university friends Anthony and Cissy, who shared with Rachel her taste for literature and for the illicit. As he delves further into the mystery surrounding her death, Alex discovers in Rachel’s wake a tangled web of sex and jealousy, of would-be lovers and spiteful friends, of the poetry of Robert Browning, and of blackmail. Brilliantly written and suffused with eroticism, mystery, and a hint of menace, Every Contact Leaves a Trace introduces a stunning new voice in contemporary fiction.

Every Contact Leaves A Trace: A Novel

The new novel from the acclaimed author of EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE

Silver & Salt EXPORT

'If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife, I would have to warn you at the outset that I don't know a great deal about her. Or at least, not as much as I thought I did...' Alex is a solitary London lawyer who is deeply in love with his beautiful wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one Midsummer Night in Oxford, all of his happiness vanishes. Shrouded in shock and grief, he returns to Oxford that winter and begins to try to piece together the mystery surrounding Rachelâe(tm)s death, discovering in her wake a tangled web of sex and jealousy, of would-be lovers and spiteful friends, of blackmail, and of revenge.

Every Contact Leaves a Trace

Slack-Tide

‘A brilliant depiction of both romantic rapture and heartfelt delusion’ (Daily Telegraph), Slack-Tide is the new sucker punch of a novel from Elanor Dymott, author of Every Contact Leaves a Trace It is four years since the loss of a child broke her marriage, and Elizabeth is fiercely protective of her independence. She meets Robert – exuberant, generous, apparently care-free – and they fall in love with breath-taking speed. Slack-Tide tracks the ebbs and flows of the affair: passionate, coercive, intensely sexual. When you’ve known lasting love and lost it, what price will you pay to find it again? ‘When two people meet is it need, fantasy or love? Slack-Tide takes us on an urgent journey and kept me reading late into the night’ Esther Freud

'With the tension of a Nicci French thriller, the intellectual fizz of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and the very best of Maggie O'Farrell's unnerving readability, Dymott is a classy storyteller' Elle From the author of Every Contact Leaves a Trace comes a story of family and the lies we tell in order to survive Following the death of her famous father, Ruthie returns to the family villa in remote, wild Greece. After fifteen years in exile she is welcomed by her older sister, Vinny. They build a fragile happiness in their haven above the sea, protecting one another from the dark secrets of their childhood. But the arrival of an English family at a neighbouring cottage, and one young girl in particular, triggers a chain of events that will plunge both women back into the past, with shocking and fatal consequences. ---- 'I read Silver and Salt as if in a trance. Elanor Dymott is a master of delicate psychological suspense' Elena Lappin, author of What Language Do I Dream in? 'Beautifully detailed with a profound sense of place and the intricate clues woven through the fabric of the novel build up to a tragic finale' Daily Express 'A beautifully observed and shattering exploration of grief as their family's tragic past is revealed' Woman & Home

Elanor Dymott

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