The Cartographer's Secret - by Tea Cooper (Paperback)

About the Book

A gripping historical mystery for fans of Kate Morton and Natasha Lester's The Paris Seamstress, The Cartographer's Secret follows a young woman's quest to heal a family rift as she becomes entangled in one of Australia's greatest historical puzzles.

Book Synopsis

A map into the past. A long-lost young woman. And a thirty-year family mystery.

The Hunter Valley, 1880. Evie Ludgrove loves to chart the landscape around her home--hardly surprising since she grew up in the shadow of her father's obsession with the great Australian explorer Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt. So when an advertisement appears in The Bulletin magazine offering a thousand-pound reward for proof of where Leichhardt met his fate, Evie is determined to use her father's papers to unravel the secret. But when Evie sets out to prove her theory, she vanishes without a trace, leaving behind a mystery that haunts her family for thirty years.

Letitia Rawlings arrives at the family estate in her Ford Model T to inform her great-aunt Olivia of a loss in their family. But Letitia is also escaping her own problems--her brother's sudden death, her mother's scheming, and her dissatisfaction with the life planned out for her. So when Letitia discovers a beautifully illustrated map that might hold a clue to the fate of her missing aunt, Evie Ludgrove, she sets out to discover the truth. But all is not as it seems, and Letitia begins to realize that solving the mystery of her family's past could offer as much peril as redemption.

A gripping historical mystery for fans of Kate Morton and Natasha Lester's The Paris Seamstress, The Cartographer's Secret follows a young woman's quest to heal a family rift as she becomes entangled in one of Australia's greatest historical puzzles.

"A galvanizing, immersive adventure . . . forcing the characters to reckon with the choice found at the crux of passion and loyalty and the power of shared blood that can either destroy or heal." --Joy Callaway, international bestselling author of The Fifth Avenue Artists Society

• Daphne du Maurier Award Winner, 2021
• Historical story with both romance and mystery
• Full-length, stand-alone novel (c. 104,000 words)
• Includes discussion questions for book clubs

Review Quotes

This historical mystery with a hefty dose of romance is hard to put down. The reader is teleported to Australia's beautiful Hunter Valley . . . nail-biting is sure to ensue.--Thrillist

'Tea Cooper's meticulous prose and deft phrasing delight the reader. Her storytelling weaves the places on Evie's map in tandem with the search Lettie makes so that the reader becomes immersed in a distant world. The reader yearns along with Lettie (and Evie, too) for the answer to Leichardt's disappearance and wants Lettie and Nathaniel to surmount the chasm that separates them. This fascinating novel informs the reader about Australia's storied past.'--The Historical Novels Review

'Shifting perspectives from Evie in 1880 to Letitia in 1911, Cooper paints a fascinating portrait of two women rebelling in their own ways against the expectations society and their family has for them. Historical-fiction fans will delight in this romantic tale of family and long-held secrets.'--BookList

'A young woman investigates her family's role in a decades-old mystery in Australian writer Cooper's moving latest (after The Girl in the Painting) . . . Cooper gets to the heart of a family's old wounds, puzzles, and obsessions, while providing a luscious historical rendering of the landscape. This layered family saga will keep readers turning the pages.'--Publishers Weekly