The Watch House by Bernie McGill(Tinder Press, £14.99)
Her family have emigrated to Newfoundland for work and she is left behind and financially insecure.
So she makes an ill-advised marriage to the island’s tailor, a much older man, and goes to live with him and his cantankerous sister Ginny.
Then Gabriel arrives. He works for Marconi, the electrical engineer, and he is curious, kind and knowledgeable. Nuala embraces all he has to offer: “I’ll do what I must to colour my grey life, to find out what love feels like, no matter what anyone says.”
The island is small, gossip is rife and Ginny has “her suspicions, sure enough”. The novel’s opening atmosphere of foreboding begins to cast a blacker pall over the twisting, turning, startling plot as Nuala finds herself caught between the past and the promise of the future.
A lyrical, wonderfully atmospheric novel.