Lauren Belfer

An American woman and her son stumble upon the dark history of a rambling English manor house in this gripping novel that marks an exciting new departure for the New York Times bestselling author of City of Light. When a close relative falls ill, Hannah Larson and her young son, Nicky, join him for the summer at Ashton Hall, an historic manor house outside Cambridge, England. A frustrated academic whose ambitions have been subsumed by the needs of her beloved neurodiverse child, Hannah longs to escape her life in New York City, where her marriage has been upended by a recently discovered, devastating betrayal. Soon after their arrival, ever-curious Nicky finds the skeletal remains of a woman who had been walled into a forgotten part of the manor centuries earlier, and Hannah is pulled into an all-consuming quest for answers, Nicky close by her side. Working from clues in old ledgers showing what the household spent on everything from music to medicine; lists of books checked out of the library; and the troubling personal papers of the long-departed family, Hannah begins to recreate the Ashton Hall of the Elizabethan era in all its color and conflict. As the multilayered secrets of her own life begin to unravel, Hannah comes to realize that the lives of Ashton Hall's women before her were not so different from her own, and she confronts what mothers throughout history have had to do to secure their independence and protect their children. In the tradition of The Weight of Ink and The Lost Apothecary, and rich with female passion, strength, and ferocity across the centuries, Ashton Hall is a novel that reveals how the most profound hauntings are within ourselves.

Ashton Hall

The New York Times-bestselling author of A Fierce Radiance and City of Light returns with a new powerful and passionate novel—inspired by historical events—about two women, one European and one American, and the mysterious choral masterpiece by Johann Sebastian Bach that changes both their lives. In the ruins of Germany in 1945, at the end of World War II, American soldier Henry Sachs takes a souvenir, an old music manuscript, from a seemingly deserted mansion and mistakenly kills the girl who tries to stop him. In America in 2010, Henry’s niece, Susanna Kessler, struggles to rebuild her life after she experiences a devastating act of violence on the streets of New York City. When Henry dies soon after, she uncovers the long-hidden music manuscript. She becomes determined to discover what it is and to return it to its rightful owner, a journey that will challenge her preconceptions about herself and her family’s history—and also offer her an opportunity to finally make peace with the past. In Berlin, Germany, in 1796, amid the city’s glittering salons where aristocrats and commoners, Christians and Jews, mingle freely despite simmering anti-Semitism, Sara Itzig Levy, a renowned musician, conceals the manuscript of an anti-Jewish cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, an unsettling gift to her from Bach’s son, her teacher. This work and its disturbing message will haunt Sara and her family for generations to come. Interweaving the stories of Susanna and Sara, and their families, And After the Fire traverses over two hundred years of history, from the eighteenth century through the Holocaust and into today, seamlessly melding past and present, real and imagined. Lauren Belfer’s deeply researched, evocative, and compelling narrative resonates with emotion and immediacy.

A Novel

And After the Fire

In 1901 Buffalo, New York, Louisa Barrett, the progressive headmistress of the exclusive Macaulay School for Girls, stumbles upon a secret involving the powerful members of her school board that could destroy everything for which she has worked as well as her relationship with her goddaughter and the child's widowed father. A first novel. Reprint.

City of Light

The exploitation of Niagara Falls to generate electricity leads to a murder involving members of Buffalo's ruling class. The heroine is a high-society school teacher who investigates and through her eyes is seen the conflict between industrialists and environmentalists of the day. A first novel.

An American woman and her son stumble upon the dark history of a rambling English manor house in this gripping novel that marks an exciting new departure for the New York Times bestselling author of City of Light. When a close relative falls ill, Hannah Larson and her young son, Nicky, join him for the summer at Ashton Hall, an historic manor house outside Cambridge, England. A frustrated academic whose ambitions have been subsumed by the needs of her beloved neurodiverse child, Hannah longs to escape her life in New York City, where her marriage has been upended by a recently discovered, devastating betrayal. Soon after their arrival, ever-curious Nicky finds the skeletal remains of a woman who had been walled into a forgotten part of the manor centuries earlier, and Hannah is pulled into an all-consuming quest for answers, Nicky close by her side. Working from clues in old ledgers showing what the household spent on everything from music to medicine; lists of books checked out of the library; and the troubling personal papers of the long-departed family, Hannah begins to recreate the Ashton Hall of the Elizabethan era in all its color and conflict. As the multilayered secrets of her own life begin to unravel, Hannah comes to realize that the lives of Ashton Hall’s women before her were not so different from her own, and she confronts what mothers throughout history have had to do to secure their independence and protect their children. In the tradition of The Weight of Ink and The Lost Apothecary, and rich with female passion, strength, and ferocity across the centuries, Ashton Hall is a novel that reveals how the most profound hauntings are within ourselves.

A Washington Post Best Novel of the Year An NPR Mystery of the Year In the anxious days after Pearl Harbor, Life photojournalist Claire Shipley finds herself covering one of the nation's most important stories. At New York City's renowned Rockefeller Institute, researchers are racing to save thousands of wounded American soldiers and countless others by developing a miraculous new drug they call penicillin. For Claire, a single mother haunted by the loss of her young daughter—a death the miracle drug could have prevented—the story is cuttingly personal, especially after she unexpectedly begins to fall in love with the shy and brilliant head physician, James Stanton. But Claire isn't the only one interested in the secret cure. When a researcher dies under suspicious circumstances, the stakes become starkly clear: someone understands just how profitable the new drug could be—and will stop at nothing to get it. Now, with lives and a new love hanging in the balance, Claire will throw herself into harm's way to find a killer—no matter what price she may have to pay.

Lauren Belfer

About

Books

Join the club