The Hourglass Factory

By: Lucy Ribchester

Narrated by: Lucy Scott

1912 and London is in turmoil…

The suffragette movement is reaching fever pitch but for broke Fleet Street tomboy Frankie George, just getting by in the cut-throat world of newspapers is hard enough. Sent to interview trapeze artist Ebony Diamond, Frankie finds herself fascinated by the tightly laced acrobat and follows her across London to a Mayfair corset shop that hides more than one dark secret.

Then Ebony Diamond mysteriously disappears in the middle of a performance, and Frankie is drawn into a world of tricks, society columnists, corset fetishists, suffragettes and circus freaks. How did Ebony vanish, who was she afraid of, and what goes on behind the doors of the mysterious Hourglass Factory?

From the newsrooms of Fleet Street to the drawing rooms of high society, the missing Ebony Diamond leads Frankie to the trail of a murderous villain with a plot more deadly than anyone could have imagined…

With a major film, Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham-Carter and Carey Mulligan coming soon, suffragettes will be back in the limelight once again, nearly one hundred years after they fought for votes for women.©2015 Lucy Ribchester (P)2015 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

‘Rollicking whodunit adventure…terrific’ (Ian Rankin)

‘Its energy, crackle and humour is infectious' (ELIZABETH BUCHAN)

‘Page-turning commercial historical fiction...a serious one to watch’ (VIV GROSKOP)