I said my story had many beginnings, and the day the camera arrived was one of them. After all, without the camera, there wouldn't have been any photographs. Without the camera, I wouldn't have a story to tell. . . . 1917 . . . In a world torn apart by war, two young Yorkshire cousins, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, announce that something marvelous has happened. They've photographed actual fairies, those ethereal creatures of mischief, living in their Cottingley, England, garden. The girls become a national sensation. The photos are declared real by none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And a nation torn apart by tragedy embraces this amazing event. Together, the cousins keep their secret about the photos for decades, until they decide it's time to tell the truth. One hundred years later . . . Olivia Kavanagh inherits her grandfather's bookshop, and is amazed to find a manuscript that has been hidden away for decades. She becomes fascinated by the tale it tells. But it's the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the story of Frances and Elsie intertwines with hers, connecting past to present . . . and blurring what is real and what is imagined.

Author Biography

Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of A Memory of Violets and The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 RNA Historical Novel of the Year award. Her third novel, The Girl from the Savoy, was an Irish Times and Globe & Mail Canada bestseller, and was shortlisted for the BGE Irish Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year. In 2017, she has published The Cottingley Secret and Last Christmas in Paris. Hazel was selected by US Library Journal as one of 'Ten Big Breakout Authors' for 2015 and her work has been translated into several languages. Hazel lives in Ireland with her husband and two children.