Ironwood

by Jennie Melville (Pseudonym), Gwendoline Butler

I stood there, frozen, quite unable to say a word. A window on a new world had opened to me. All the time I had been going about my life, cooking, choosing clothes, getting my hair washed, this wall of suspicion had been building up all around me. Without my knowing it, people had been considering me, weighing me up and finally concluding I could be a poisoner...Anna Barclay knew she was innocent. Others were not so certain. And someone in particular wanted to destroy her.But it wasn't until the night of the fire in her cottage that Anna realized someone wanted her out of the way.And so she ran to Ironwood, the home of her childhood.But even there there was no shelter. The one she most trusted was the person she had to fear.

Genres: Gothic

190 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Gwendoline Williams Butler (aka Gwendoline Butler)

Gwendoline Williams was born on 19th August 1922 in South London, England, UK, daughter of Alice (Lee) and Alfred Edward Williams, her younger twin brothers are also authors. Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read History, and later lectured there. On 16th October 1949, she married Dr Lionel Harry Butler (1923-1981), a professor of medieval history at University of St. Andrews and historian, Fellow of All Souls and Principal of Royal Holloway College. The marriage had a daughter, Lucilla Butler.

In 1956, she started to published John Coffin novels under her married name, Gwendoline Butler. In 1962, she decided used her grandmother's name, Jennie Melville as pseudonym to sing her Charmian Daniels novels. She was credited for inventing the "woman's police procedural". In addition to her mystery series, she also wrote romantic novels. In 1981, her novel The Red Staircase won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.