The Girl in the Midnight Maze

All her mother left her was a clue to a family secret. But is it a mystery best left unsolved?

For decades Emma Bowen has hoped she and her mother, Margaret, might find a way back into each other’s lives. Even as a child, her strongest connection to her mother was a painting Margaret created before Emma was born, of a little girl lost in a maze. So when Margaret dies, gifting the painting to a total stranger, Emma is consumed by grief—for her mother, the little girl, and the relationship they never had.

Clearing out her mother’s seaside flat, Emma is faced with a mountain of possessions and paperwork from a life she knows so little about. When she discovers something that throws doubt over everything she’s ever been told about Margaret’s past, Emma must decide whether to pull at the thread of secrets and lies. Will the truth help her through her grief—or reveal a loss that runs deeper than she ever imagined?

Revised edition: Previously published as The Girl in the Maze, this edition of The Girl in the Midnight Maze includes editorial revisions.

Cathy trained as a journalist and wrote about everything from accounting and supply chains to football finances and port strategy before moving into public relations. In 2022, after having spent a lifetime pottering around bookshops, she bought Kemptown Bookshop in Brighton, where she has created a community hub that supports local authors and aspiring writers. In 2023, she took on management of The Creative Writing Programme, the leading independent centre for creative writing teaching in the south-east of England―the course that set her on track to be a writer. When she’s not writing (or reading), Cathy loves pottering in other people’s bookshops. She lives in Brighton with her three children and two rescue cats.