The Wind Off the Small Isles and the Lost One

by Mary Stewart

First published 2017

Amazon

4.3(1,391)

In The Wind Off the Small Isles, secretary Perdita West visits Lanzarote in 1968 while assisting a novelist with research. A local story about a wealthy woman who eloped with a fisherman in 1879 becomes immediate when a rockfall traps Perdita in a sea cave and the physical evidence of the older tragedy emerges around her.

The collection also includes The Lost One, first published in 1960, in which Perdita’s night journey through isolated northern countryside becomes an urgent search. Bringing the two stories together highlights Stewart’s skill with compressed suspense, landscape and heroines who act decisively before they possess the full explanation.