The Square of Sevens: The Times and Sunday Times Best Historical Fiction of 2023

The Sunday Times Top Five Bestseller
A BBC Two Between the Covers Book Club Pick
A Guardian Best Crime and Thrillers of the Year Pick

‘This rich, complex and haunting Dickensian epic is a triumph of the Gothic genre’ — Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal

Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s The Square of Sevens is an epic and sweeping mystery set in Georgian high society, a dazzling story offering up intrigue, heartbreak, and audacious twists.

This is your story, Red. You must tell it well …

A girl known only as Red, the daughter of a Cornish fortune-teller, travels with her father making a living predicting fortunes using the ancient method: the Square of Sevens. When her father suddenly dies, Red becomes the ward of a gentleman scholar.

Now raised as a lady amidst the Georgian splendour of Bath, her fortune-telling is a delight to high society. But she cannot ignore the questions that gnaw at her soul: who was her mother? How did she die? And who are the mysterious enemies her father was always terrified would find him?

The pursuit of these mysteries takes her from Cornwall and Bath to London and Devon, from the rough ribaldry of the Bartholomew Fair to the grand houses of two of the most powerful families in England. And while Red’s quest brings her the possibility of great reward, it also leads her into grave danger …

‘A wonderfully inventive novel’ — The Times and Sunday Times, Best Historical Fiction of the Year

‘A sweeping Dickensian tour de force of a novel’ — Susan Stokes-Chapman, bestselling author of Pandora

‘I doubt I’ll read a better book this year’ — Chris Whitaker, bestselling author of We Begin at the End