The French Heir

by Cecilia Peartree

The French Heir is the second in a series of historical novels set in Sussex in the years around the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Sebastian Preston knows little of his true background. He has grown up with the Prestons, a Sussex fishing family, after being found by Jem Preston in the year of the Terror, a small boy wandering alone on the quayside at Dieppe. Because he knows he might be French, he studies the language at every opportunity, a skill which serves him well, saving him from arrest and transportation or worse, and enabling him to find employment as a government agent.When his travels lead him to Brussels he encounters, not for the first time as it turns out, Annabel Cranbrook, the daughter of a Viscount. HIs life becomes inextricably entangled with hers and it is through this association that he finds out something about his true family at last.

Genres: Historical Fiction

229 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2019

About the author

Cecilia Peartree is the mystery writing pen name of a former database manager who lives in Edinburgh. She is a history graduate and as well as writing, she uses her spare time to research family history, serve on a local committee and look after cats.
In real life, Cecilia has two sons, one a computer consultant and one a writer, film-maker and social media specialist.
Incidentally, there are now 27 books in the Pitkirtly Mystery series, and 6 in the Adventurous Quest series, but who's counting? (Apart from me, of course) Recently published work includes six historical novels (with more in progress) and 3 mysteries in a new series, as well as some random odds and ends.

Reviews

[Lexie Conyngham]

I do like this series, a kind of Brighton Jane Austen with a spin of adventure and peril. It's interesting, too, that the author moves from one character to another from book to book: in the first the focus was Jack, eventually heir to Marshingdean, and now we're seeing things from the perspective (mostly) of Sebastian, with his mysterious French background. There is a very different atmosphere here from the author's Pitkirtly series, which I absolutely love - you'd almost think you had hit a different writer - but it's very appealing still.