The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman

This historical novel, set in 1952, begins dramatically with a dead or nearly dead body. Honor Wilson, a respectable widow, inherited a large Victorian house in London after her much-older husband died but little in the way of other assets. She takes in lodgers: George (Georgina), ostensibly studying art but actually posing in the nude as an artist’s model, a shady occupation for Lord Mountford-Owen’s daughter; Robbie, estranged from his wife, living in Honor’s attic; teenage Mina, trying to better herself through elocution and deportment lessons while she works in a Cinema; and Saul, a Holocaust survivor from Romania, who lost his wife and daughter.Everyone is helping to dig a hole in the garden to bury the most recent addition to the household, Jimmy Sullivan. The question is how did he get there, who killed him, and why?Read more »