Crocodile Bird

Few people under the age of seventeen have read the whole of Virgil in Latin and witnessed two murders. But Liza Beck is no ordinary teenager. She has grown up alone with her mother, Eve, in the remote gatekeeper's cottage of magnificent Shrove House. Here Liza has been nourished by books and her mother's obsessive love, carefully shielded from the "contamination" of the outside world. No newpapers, no TV, no phone, no car, no school. Liza knows perfectly well she can never leave Shrove House, or her mother, to go with the handsome young drifter who tends the garden. Then one day the police come and take Eve away forever—and now Sean Holford will find out, little by little, all about Liza's past and her mother's fierce, mysterious claim to Shrove House. And to his growing horror, he'll learn about all the men who came there-and never left alive.

First sentence: The world began to fall apart at nine in the evening.

Year

1996

Language

English

Publisher

Dell Publishing

Editions

18

Pages

374

ISBN

9780440218654

Data source: Wikidata