This image is the cover for the book Fruitful Bodies, The Sara Selkirk Mysteries

Fruitful Bodies, The Sara Selkirk Mysteries

After an aging musician becomes the chief suspect in a murder investigation, only her former pupil can save her

Sara Selkirk lives one of the most complicated lives in Bath. When she isn’t performing to rave reviews as a cellist, she must navigate the troubled waters of small-town life, a complicated relationship with the newly single amateur cellist DCI Andrew Poole, and the occasional murder. Another problem is heaped on when she discovers her former teacher Joyce Cruikshank trapped in the clutches of alcoholism. Sara decides to take her in and help her get the therapy she needs in the idyllic English spa town of Bath.

Dr. Golightly, the charismatic director of the Sulis Clinic, a magnet for the rich and supposedly unwell, claims that its mix of rest, art therapy, and organic cuisine is a potent one for well-being, and Sara arranges for Joyce to be admitted. But when Joyce is implicated in the murder of a Japanese tourist who is found dead in a cupboard in a Bath pub, Sara’s relationship with Andrew comes under strain. Then the Sulis patients begin to die, and Dr. Golightly’s reputation is on the brink of collapse. Sara is drawn further into the investigation—and into danger.

Morag Joss

Morag Joss’s writing career began in 1996 when her first short story won an award in a national competition. Starting to write, she says, meant “discovering a lifelong ambition I didn’t know I had.” Joss’s first three novels comprise the Sara Selkirk Mysteries, the first of which, Funeral Music, was a finalist for the Dilys Award. Half Broken Things won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger Award and was later adapted into a TV film starring Penelope Wilton, and The Night Following was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Some critics describe Joss’s work as psychological suspense and others as literary fiction. She received a PhD from Oxford Brookes University in 2014 and is now at work on her ninth novel, Good to Go.

Open Road Integrated Media