Sometimes, the research that you do while putting together a book hands you a gift. You don’t have to take it and use it, not right away and perhaps not ever… but they’re certainly nice things to find, to file away for later.

In the course of writing ‘The Whispering Woods’, I can think of three serendipitous finds that stood out. The first arose because I’d decided that Tilly’s hometown would be Danvers. I’d chosen it while I was writing ‘The Color of Deception’, simply by picking it off the ...