Life blood

Caroline Llewellyn, acclaimed author of The Masks of Rome and The Lady of the Labyrinth, returns with the powerful and evocative story of a long-ago murder, a lost novel, a neolithic burial mound, and the way in which they interweave to troubling effect in the imagination of a young woman.
It's spring when recently widowed Jo Treleven arrives with her baby son, Max, in the picturesque Cotswold village of Shipcote to take possession of a cottage left to her by her grandmother.
Jo, a children's book writer and illustrator, hopes to find here the peace that has eluded her since her husband's mysterious death. Instead, she learns that she's living in the house where a woman was brutally murdered fifty years ago. The killer was never caught, but the murderer's identity may have been revealed in a novel written by Jo's grandmother. Strangely, all copies of the published book, Life Blood, seem to have been destroyed.
Far from home and alone, Jo discovers, to her surprise, that she's distantly related to an influential local family, the Mallabys, who both attract and unsettle her. She reaches out to a young single mother, Sophie Dymock, and feels herself increasingly drawn to a divorced American, David Cornelius, and his eleven-year-old son, Rafe.
But whom can she trust? As her search for Life Blood leads her to disturbIng truths about the past, Jo realizes that she may have put herself and her baby in mortal danger.
A born storyteller, Llewellyn brings elegance and style to her superb novels of suspense. Life Blood is the best yet from this gifted author.