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The Glass Marsh, the new Esme Lark mystery, is out soon. Pre-order a copy

The new Esme Lark mystery

The Glass Marsh

The marsh has frozen. Something has surfaced.

Published by Finch & Holloway on publication day, in hardback, ebook and audio.

Pre-order from

Esme Lark · Book 4

Early praise for The Glass Marsh

“Thorne writes cold the way other people write fear. I finished it in one sitting with the heating on full.”
Bryony Castell, author of The Quiet Year
“The best Esme Lark yet: a locked-room mystery the size of a county.”
Dead Letter Quarterly
“Atmospheric, humane and fiendishly plotted. The ending made me gasp out loud on a train.”
The Reading Room podcast

The opening lines

Begin at Fennick Sluice, before dawn

The whole of chapter one is here to read, a page at a time. Close it whenever you like: the site keeps your place, so you can pick up where you stopped.

Read chapter one

Chapter One

A Lamp in the Reeds

The marsh had frozen overnight, and in the first light it looked like a floor of broken windows.

Detective Sergeant Esme Lark left the car on the sea wall and walked the last half-mile, because the track to Fennick Sluice had not been gritted in living memory and she did not trust it.

The series

The Esme Lark mysteries

Detective Sergeant Esme Lark was born on Romney Marsh, left it at eighteen and came back to police it. Each book is a complete case, but her story runs through all four. Start with The Drowned Church.

    All books, in reading order

    An illustrated portrait of Clemency Thorne in a green scarf and round glasses

    The author

    Clemency Thorne

    Clemency grew up in a pub on Romney Marsh, spent eleven years as a court reporter in Maidstone and now writes in a narrow house in Canterbury with a view of a car park and, if she leans, the cathedral.

    Her first novel, The Drowned Church, won the Sandpiper Award for best debut. Her books have been translated into fourteen languages.

    Read more about ClemencyPress and media

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      The newsletter

      The Marsh Letter

      Four letters a year from Clemency’s desk: news of the next book before anyone else, the real places behind the stories, and a short piece of fiction you won’t find anywhere else.