Margins
The Bone Flower book cover
The Bone Flower
2022
First Published
3.89
Average Rating
240
Number of Pages

On a November evening in Victorian London, the moneyed but listless Edward Monteith stokes the fire at his local gentlemen’s club, listening to stories of supernatural experiences and theories of life after death. His curiosity leads him to a séance, where he falls under the spell of a beautiful flower seller. But Victorian society does not look kindly on love between a gentleman of means and a Romani girl, and when he faces being cut off by his family, Edward makes a decision with horrifying consequences. Two years later Edward is married and anticipating the birth of his first child, in a beautiful house lined with orange blossom trees. But the wrongs of the past are not so easily forgotten, and the boundary between the living and the dead begins to thin… A deliciously chilling Gothic novel, The Bone Flower is a deeply human story about guilt, betrayal and the cruelty of social expectations. A dark, uncanny love story from the author of Polari prize-shortlisted Prodigal and The Children's Home, The Bone Flower will delight fans of Edward Carey and Essie Fox.

Avg Rating
3.89
Number of Ratings
72
5 STARS
25%
4 STARS
46%
3 STARS
22%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

Charles Lambert
Charles Lambert
Author · 11 books
Charles Lambert was born in the United Kingdom but has lived in Italy for most of his adult life. His most recent novel is Birthright, set in Rome in the 1980s and examining what happens when two young women discover that they are identical twins, separated at birth. In 2022, he published The Bone Flower, a Gothic love story with a sinister edge, set in Victorian London. His previous novel, Prodigal, shortlisted for the Polari Prize in 2019, was described by the Gay & Lesbian Review as "Powerful… an artful hybrid of parable (as the title signifies), a Freudian family romance, a Gothic tale, and a Künstlerroman in the tradition of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” For the Kirkus Review, The Children's Home, published in 2016, was 'a one-of-a-kind literary horror story', while Two Dark Tales, published in October 2017, continues to disturb. Earlier books include three novels, a collection of prize-winning short stories and a memoir, With a Zero at its Heart, selected by the Guardian as one of its top ten books from 2014.
548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved