New Kate Mosse novel for September

Orion will publish a new novel from Kate Mosse on 11th September.

The Taxidermist’s Daughter is described as "a Gothic psychological thriller" which deals with a series of grisly murders which rock a flood-beset village in West Sussex in 1912.

The book draws on the landscape where Mosse spent her childhood and is said to be inspired by visits she made in the 1970s to the Walter Potter Museum of Curious Taxidermy.

Mosse said: "I love Gothic fiction and I was obsessed with Walter Potter’s museum when I was a child. Potter was a self-taught Victorian taxidermist, who established a small gallery in his native village of Bramber in mid Sussex. I was both horrified and horribly drawn to the exhibitions and, I suppose, I’ve always thought I’d write something inspired by the museum.

"Having finished my Languedoc Trilogy after 15 years of researching, planning and writing, the time was right to exchange the mountains of the Pyrenees for the creepy glass bells jars and grisly feather and fur displays of a taxidermist’s workshop."

Susan Lamb, group m.d. of Orion, said: "A new novel from Kate is always something wonderful to look forward to – she weaves a magical story with memorable characters and atmospheric settings. To learn we would have The Taxidermist’s Daughter for autumn 2014 was the icing on the cake." A "major marketing and publicity campaign" will back the new novel, Orion said.

Meanwhile BBC Radio 4 Extra will broadcast stories from Mosse's The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales from 10th-14th March. A special edition of Citadel, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the death of the women whose real-life stories were the inspiration for the novel, will be released on 24th April.

Mosse's three Languedoc novels, Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel, have together sold 1,869,861 copies through Nielsen BookScan, with Labyrinth's total numbering 1,206,859.