The Enigmas (A Novel)

A mesmerizing novel about a woman who must turn back time to save her sister's life, set against the backdrop of wartime Britain.

London, 1940: Twenty-nine-year-old Beatrice Bone knows that she’s considered eccentric. With her love of Victorian jewelry and Gothic stories, she’s well on her way to becoming society’s most pitied woman: a spinster. The one person who has always understood her is Clemmie, her younger sister, who is off contributing to the war effort while Beatrice still sleeps in her childhood bedroom. But when Clemmie dies in a fire while undertaking mysterious work for the Foreign Office, all that Beatrice has left of her is an antique pocket watch, her sister’s final birthday gift. When she discovers that it also acts as a portal, enabling her to return to any moment that she personally can remember, Beatrice resolves to go back in time, to find work at Bletchley Park and save Clemmie. But her attempts to change the past have terrible consequences, and she is faced with a devastating choice: her sister’s life, or her country’s future?

London, 1915: With her husband away fighting in the Great War, young mother Alice battles misogyny and prejudice to treat wounded soldiers at Endell Street Hospital, London’s first medical center staffed entirely by female doctors. But the horrors that she confronts there unlock long-buried memories of her own mother’s death, forcing her to confront an ability she has long tried to repress…

With an epic scope, sweeping storytelling, and heart-wrenching dilemmas, Emilia Hart delivers another spellbinding tale of female resilience against the odds, and a celebration of how love transcends time.