The Vanishing Point: A Novel

Front Cover
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006 M06 2 - 385 pages
An Englishwoman searches for her sister in colonial America in this historical tale of dark suspense, love, and betrayal for fans of Philippa Gregory.

Bright and inquisitive, Hannah Powers was raised by a father who treated her as if she were his son. While her beautiful and reckless sister, May, pushes the limits of propriety in their small English town, Hannah harbors her own secret: their father has given her an education forbidden to women. But Hannah’s secret serves her well when she journeys to colonial Maryland to reunite with May, who has been married off to a distant cousin after her sexual misadventures ruined her marriage prospects in England.

As Hannah searches for May, who has disappeared, she finds herself falling in love with her brother-in-law. Alone in a wild, uncultivated land where the old rules no longer apply, Hannah is freed from the constraints of the society that judged both her and May as dangerous—too smart, too fearless, and too hungry for life. But Hannah is also plagued by doubt, as her quest for answers to May’s fate grows ever more disturbing and tangled.

This e-book includes a sample chapter of Illuminations.

Praise for The Vanishing Point

“An authentically detailed period piece with elements of gothic suspense thrown in for good measure.” —Booklist

“A passionate, spell-casting story. The world Mary Sharrett creates is vivid, intimate, evocative. I was unable to put this book down.” —Sandra Gulland, author of the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy

“A truly captivating novel. It wears its history lightly, in the best tradition of great historical fiction.” —Katharine West, author of The Little Women
 

Selected pages

Contents

III
A Fish on Land
The Bed of Skins
The Crack in the Cradle
Rabbit Skin
Near Drowning
The pact
V
At the Sign of the Mortar and Unicorn
The Vanishing Point
Afterword
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2006)

MARY SHARRATT’s first novel, Summit Avenue, was a Book Sense selection. She has taught at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and has given workshops around the country on the subject of women and fairy tales. She lives in Lancashire, England.

Bibliographic information