Tangled Webs by Maria McDonald

Two women take drastic action to protect the life they’ve built, in this gripping new novel set in early twentieth-century Belfast by the author of The Devil’s Own. Jane Best and Agnes Williams are known in Belfast for taking in lodgers at Riverdale House, the business they started together after losing their husbands in the Anglo-Zulu War. For forty years, they’ve welcomed young women in need of a respectable place to stay in the city?including unfortunate cases like young Iris Seoin, who’s come here to get away from her abuser. When a man shows up at the lodging house looking for Iris, he experiences a flash of recognition. He knows these two. He knows their past. And he knows what they’re hiding. For Jane and Agnes, everything is at stake. But if they succeed in burying this blackmailer, will their secret stay buried with him?