SHORTLISTED: The Garden of Lost Secrets - by A.M.Howell

It was the discovery of a 100-year-old gardener’s notebook at Ickworth House in Suffolk which fired the imagination of author A. M. Howell. Who wrote in it? Who would have worked in this garden over a century ago? What would they have thought of the world they were living in?

The Garden of Lost Secrets will take you into a world of mystery and war. Clara is sent to stay with her formidable aunt and uncle in the Gardener’s Cottage of a country estate. But amongst the hothouses and sweeping grounds hide many secrets: a locked room and a hidden key, and a mysterious boy who only appears in the gardens at night…Except Clara has a secret of her own — a terrible one, buried in the pocket of her pinafore. And for Clara to unravel the garden’s secrets, she will have to face up to a truth she can’t bring herself to acknowledge and a war she’s desperate to forget…