Journal

Essays on the six novels: where the heroines came from, the cities and centuries they return to, the objects that remember — and the questions the books leave open.

06/10/2026 · 5 min read

Where to start: a guide to the six novels

Six books, six heroines, six doors into the past. Which one to open first depends on what you are in the mood for — suspense, an investigation, a journey into another century or an old house with a secret.

02Mirrors and portraits: the face from another centuryIn almost every novel the heroine meets her own face where it cannot be — in a portrait above a fireplace, in a stranger's sketch, in a newspaper photograph. On the image that runs through all six books.03/10/2026
03Five centuries of one fire: on The InquisitorA man who burns in his sleep, a scientist who studies memory, and Milan in 1484. On the darkest of the six novels — and on why it still does not end in the dark.29/09/2026
04The keeper: on UbrusA photographer wakes from a two-and-a-half-year coma speaking Hebrew and Latin. Seven lives, one piece of silk as fine as a cobweb, and a road that leads from Paris to Jerusalem.26/09/2026
05Six doors into the pastA memory sensor, clinical death, a row of numbers, hypnosis, a glass sphere with an eye inside, a pair of satin slippers. Each heroine gets her own way into another century — and each door says something about the woman who opens it.20/09/2026
06The female line: curses, gifts and inheritancesWomen who die on their thirty-fifth birthday. A girl of an old family who dies every second generation. Anger that kills. On the family secrets that pass from mother to daughter in The Volcano, The Experiment and The Inheritance.13/09/2026