'The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other . . .'
Birdie Keller wakes up one freezing January morning to hear that her sister's killer has been freed from jail. Birdie leaves for London with a pistol and a plan: to find this man and make him pay. She's been waiting two decades to get him, biding her time: here, at last, revenge.
So begins a cat-and-mouse chase that takes Birdie from the grit and grime of city nicks, to wild and windswept moors, to the savage beauty of the Cornish coast, and, finally, to Devon, her homeland, back to the place where it all began - as she vows to finish the story.
But every story has two sides. Because Jimmy Maguire, the man she's after, knew Birdie a long time ago, in a life she'd sooner forget. They've got history, and he isn't the only one with a secret.
As Jimmy travels south to face his past - a tangled web of family ties and broken bonds - he can sense that something is hunting him. Birdie lingers there in the darkness, but so does a terrible truth he's run from all these years - one he's never had the courage to confront . . .
The Sunshine Man is the suspenseful new novel from Emma Stonex, bestselling author of The Lamplighters.
In der Silvesternacht verschwinden vor der Küste Cornwalls drei Männer spurlos von einem Leuchtturm. Die Tür ist von innen verschlossen. Der zum Abendessen gedeckte Tisch ist unberührt. Die Uhren sind stehengeblieben.
Zurück bleiben drei Frauen, die auch zwei Jahrzehnte später von dem rätselhaften Geschehen verfolgt werden. Die Tragödie hätte Helen, Jenny und Michelle zusammenbringen sollen, hat sie aber auseinandergerissen. Als sie zum ersten Mal ihre Seite der Geschichte erzählen, kommt ein Leben voller Entbehrungen zutage - des monatelangen Getrenntseins, des Sehnens und Hoffens. Und je tiefer sie hinabtauchen, desto dichter wird das Geflecht aus Geheimnissen und Lügen, Realität und Einbildung.
Cornwall, 1972. Three lighthouse keepers vanish from a remote rock, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week.
What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. Black rocks roll beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?
Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on. Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them. He wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. But only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface . . .
Inspired by real events, The Lamplighters is an intoxicating and suspenseful mystery, an unforgettable story of love and grief that explores the way our fears blur the line between the real and the imagined.
