On Friday next, pub owner Jack Steadman would hang for the murder of Alfie Goode, drunkard and ne'er-do-well. The case was open-and-shut to everyone but Miss Harriet Unwin, who had less than a week to prove that Jack, a Crimean war hero, was innocent. Her snooping soon took her to the ballroom of a [...]

For a respectable governess like Harriet Unwin, her first few weeks in the shabby, inhospitable home of the Partingtons were as unhappy as any she could remember. The bone-chilling cold, the grim sparseness of the meals, the embittered meanness of old Mr Partington: but for the kindness shown by his[...]