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The Cartographer's Secret

A Dual Timeline Historical Mystery with a Romance Thread

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The Cartographer's Secret

By: Tea Cooper
Narrated by: Casey Withoos
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£5.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends on 5 July 2026 at 11:59 BST. Cancel monthly.

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International bestselling author Tea Cooper's The Cartographer's Secret is a richly layered historical mystery about how a young woman's quest to heal a family rift becomes a quest to solve one of Australia's greatest puzzles. Perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Natasha Lester's The Paris Seamstress.

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.

The Cartographer's Secret, filled with buried secrets, family legacy, and an exploration of the thin line between passion and obsession, is perfect for fans of historical fiction where the setting is immersive and the seamless blend of fact and fiction brings the story and its characters to life.

20th Century Amateur Sleuths Historical Mystery World Literature
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Critic reviews

'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.'
'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.'
'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.'
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.
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