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The Skeleton Key

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The Skeleton Key

By: Erin Kelly
Narrated by: Helen Keeley
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About this listen

This reunion will tear a family apart....

Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family's insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried—gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore's pelvis remained hidden.

The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, in frenzied competition, obsessed to a dangerous degree. People sold their homes to travel to England and search for Elinore. Marriages broke down as the quest consumed people. A man died. The book made Frank a rich man. His daughter, Nell, became a recluse.

But now the Churchers must be reunited. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose.

From the best-selling author of He Said/She Said and Watch Her Fall, this is a taut, mesmerising novel about a daughter haunted by her father's legacy....

©2022 Erin Kelly trading as ES Moylan Limited (P)2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Crime Fiction Psychological Suspense Treasure Fiction Mystery

Critic Reviews

"An intricately plotted thriller, full of detail and invention, with impeccably realised settings and characters as monstrous as they are believable. Above all, it is a completely addictive story of two families destroyed by success. Erin Kelly is a genius." (Jane Casey)

"Moody, propulsive and one of the most intriguing set ups I've read in years. Erin Kelly doesn't put a foot wrong in this atmospheric, original thriller." (Gillian McAllister)

"A feat of real ambition and imagination—original, suspenseful and with complex characters that spring irresistibly to life on the page, this is Erin Kelly at her finest." (Louise Candlish)

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Entertaining Mystery

Family secrets, twists galore. This book delivers a very entertaining read. What you give up to preserve the family unit. Women are expendable in the ‘face of male genius’

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DNF - really dull and i skipped to end

I loved "He said/She Said" by Erin Kelly, but this was really tedious and slow. I stayed with it on a long car journey, but then skipped to epilogue to get it over with. Not for me. Great narration, but boring.

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