When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her grandfather’s bookshop she finds herself pulled into the mystery within its pages. Her grandmother has been placed in a home and her memory is disappearing rapidly, but once in a while she is just lucid enough to feed the fires of Olivia’s curiosity.
Decades earlier, two young girls create a sensation when they capture photos of fairies near a brook in the local woods. Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright were two young girls who became famous overnight. News of their fantastic photos, seen as evidence of the existence of fairies, reached all edges of the world and even attracted famous figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle.
Olivia Kavanagh holds the key to the answers, if she can only solve the riddle. How was her grandmother involved with the girls at Cottingley? Who put together the manuscript in her grandfather’s book shop?
Finding the answers suddenly becomes a quest for Olivia to find herself and her own place in the world, both fantastical and otherwise.
The Cottingley Secret, by Hazel Gaynor, is a novel for history fans and mystery lovers. If you liked Hazel Gaynor’s other works (I know I did), or if you like authors like Kate Morton or Kimberley Freeman, then definitely give The Cottingley Secret a try.
