On the Nature of Magic

A Gothic supernatural mystery for fans for The Quickening and The Shape of Darkness, featuring real-life events and people, such as George Méliès and the Moberly-Jourdain incident, where two English women claim to have seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette in the gardens of Versailles.

1902. 

Helena Walton-Cisneros, known for finding answers to the impossible, has started her own detective agency. She takes on two new uncanny cases, both located in Paris – which itself is too much of a coincidence to ignore. In the first case, two English women claim to have seen the ghost of Marie Antoinette in the gardens of Versailles. The second case is the murder of a young woman working at the mysterious Méliès Star Films studio outside Paris. 

As Helena and her colleague Eliza investigate, they hear whispers of vanishings at Méliès Star Films, strange lights, spies, actors flying without ropes and connections to the occult. 

What is George Méliès practising at his secretive film studio? And is it connected to the haunting in Versailles? Helena and Eliza will only find the answers if they accept the natural world is darker, stranger than they could ever have imagined…

Marian Womack, author of The Golden Key and The Swimmers, was born in Andalusia and educated in the UK. Her debut short story collection, Lost Objects (Luna Press, 2018) was shortlisted for two BSFA awards and a BFA award. She is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and she holds degrees from Oxford and Cambridge universities. Marian lives in Cambridge, at the edge of the Fens.