Impossible Causes [Paperback] Mayhew, Julie

Maldon, Essex. 1957. A town living under the shadow of something it can't name. When a teenage girl is found drowned in the estuary, the inquest calls it suicide. But her best friend knows better — and what she uncovers will crack open the fault lines running beneath a community that thrives on silence. Julie Mayhew builds a claustrophobic post-war world where gossip is currency, conformity is survival, and the truth might be the most dangerous thing of all. This is historical fiction with teeth: taut, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling. It channels the paranoia of *The Crucible* through a very British lens of repression and whispered scandal. For readers who like their period dramas dark and their protagonists stubborn enough to burn the whole place down.