The Fourth Knot

Once in nineteen years the moon brings the highest tide Merrow Holm ever sees, and this Midsummer it comes with no one holding the Fourth Knot, the cord a Curnow knot-wife tied three hundred years ago to keep the sea from taking the island. On the eve of the king tide a stranger who claimed the knot by right of Rescorla blood is found dead in the lamp room of the Holm Light, the cord is gone from its stone, and Hester Rescorla, who Stella now knows tied the knot that drowned Tom Angove, is under arrest for a murder Stella is almost sure she didn’t commit. With the sea climbing the harbour steps, Stella has one tide to find the cord, the killer and the truth, and to learn what her grandmother meant: a knot holds what you feel, not what you mean, and some knots take more than one pair of hands.