1665. It is five years since King Charles II returned from exile, the scars of the English Civil Wars are yet to heal and now the Great Plague engulfs the land.
Alethea Hawthorne is safe inside the walls of the Calverton household as a lady’s companion waiting in anticipation of the day she can return to her ancestral home of Measham Hall.
But when Alethea suddenly finds herself cast out on the plague-ridden streets of London, a long road to Derbyshire lies ahead.
Militias have closed their boroughs off to outsiders for fear of contamination.
Fortune smiles on her when Jack appears, an unlikely travelling companion who helps this determined girl to navigate a perilous new world of religious dissenters, charlatans and a pestilence that afflicts peasants and lords alike.
The Master of Measham Hall by Anna Abney is published in paperback on 23 June, 2022.
Read about the ideas behind Anna’s book in her feature Plague and pandemic: how we responded then and now.
