A grand hotel, a famous opera star and a psychoanalyst with a hidden agenda. Kate Mascarenhas's third novel offers her readers a glamorous, thrilling ride through murder, madness and the darkest recesses of the mind.
February, 1929. The Regent Hotel in Birmingham is a place of deception and glamour. Behind its six-storeyed façade, guests sip absinthe cocktails on velvet banquettes, spying on their surroundings in the gilt mirrors and perfectly polished tableware, while the hotel's red-jacketed staff scurry through its lavish corridors to ensure the finest service is always at hand.
In the early evening, a psychoanalyst checks in under a pseudonym: Nora Dickinson. Nora is young, diligent and ambitious. Though she doesn't see herself as a liar, she is travelling with an agenda. Having followed the famous opera singer, Berenice Oxbow, from Zurich to Birmingham, she's determined not to let her out of her sight.
But when a terrible snow storm isolates the hotel – and its guests – from the outside world, the lines between nightmare and reality begin to blur and Nora will find herself face to face with a past she thought she had long left behind...
'Witty, inventive and unflashily wise about human hearts; Mascarenhas's future promises to be an exciting one' Guardian.
'Breathtakingly tender and wryly understated, The Psychology of Time Travel feels like an antidote to a great deal of reported (and even fictionalized) history, its excised women now finding their way back into the spotlight' New York Times.
'Bringing magical realism to a contemporary Oxford setting in an atmospheric examination of gender inequality' Guardian, on The Thief on the Winged Horse.
'Captivating, inventive and tender ... A dazzling mix of crime, romance, magic and myth' Adele Parks, on The Thief on the Winged Horse.
'This is a novel packed with ideas ... It'll leave you turning over the concepts in your mind long after the story is finished' SFX, on The Psychology of Time Travel
