The Nanny
Fellow writer Tess Gerritson described The Nanny as “a dark and twisted version of Downton Abbey gone very, very wrong.”
Jo, with a ten-year-old daughter Ruby, is suddenly widowed in California. With no income, and without US residency status, Jo returns to England to live with her also-widowed mother—Virginia—in the family’s stately home, Lake Hall. The mother Jo’s been estranged from for thirty years. The mother who never loved her.
When she was seven, her beloved Nanny Hannah disappeared overnight. For Jocelyn (as she was known then), Hannah was her whole world. Losing her was devastating.
When Jo takes Ruby for a boat ride to the lake on the estate, Ruby’s foot gets stuck in some tangled roots at the edge of the water. In freeing her, Jo dislodges a skull that’s been submerged. Police discover there’s an entire skeleton. How long has it been there? Whose is it?
As the story unfolds, we alternate between seeing events through the eyes of Jo and Virginia, and between past events and what’s happening in the present. We discover that what really happened is different from what either of them thought they knew. And neither of them anticipates the way things are unfolding now.
Published in 2019, The Nanny is available in all formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook and audiobook.
A former art historian and photographer, Gilly Macmillan’s writing career took off like a skyrocket in 2015 with her first novel, What She Knew (titled Burnt Paper Sky in the UK). It was published in twenty countries, hit the New York Times Bestseller list, and was a finalist for the International Thriller Writers’ 2016 Best First Novel award. Since then Macmillan has produced a book a year, expanding her popularity with each one. Her seventh, To Tell You the Truth, will be published in summer 2020; the UK edition is due in June, the North American edition in September.
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