Rachel Sargeant

Welcome to my website. Thank you for stopping by. Here I talk about my current writing projects as well as my published novels. On my blog, I also review books I’ve enjoyed reading.

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Out This Year

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“‘An exceptional psychological thriller...unlike anything I have ever read - I devoured it.’”

— Ruth Gilligan, bestselling author of The Butchers

We lived in a house on Beech Avenue.

Outside-People say we're safe now.
But one of us wants to go back.
Back to that house and the darkness it held.

Police raid an ordinary house in a quiet suburban street and find a traumatised teenager held captive with his family. They call him a survivor, but he doesn't know what to believe. His memories don't match what his siblings and the press tell him about his home.

As he struggles to make sense of his new world, he must find and face the truth.

With one of his siblings set on revenge, should he forget his family, or turn from victim to killer?

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DI Steph Lewis comes under an unforgiving media spotlight in this twisty locked room mystery, where a possible murder is committed live on air.

During a West Gloucestershire Police conference in Cheltenham Town Hall, Steph and her colleague DC Harriet Harris are summoned to a film studio in nearby Imperial Mews. Viewers of a popular chat show have reported one of the panellists collapsing on air.

At the scene, Steph and Harriet discover the man, a controversial and unpopular doctor, sprawled on the floor. The livestream is still running, other panellists are horrified and the studio is in chaos. Is the death accidental, the result of a severe allergy, or is there more to the fatality than meets the eye?

Then a video of the detectives’ unsuccessful resuscitation attempt goes viral, causing Steph and Harriet unwelcome media attention.

The pair must cast aside personal animosity, aggravated by the press intrusion, to investigate their suspects: the producer, the studio runner, the cameraman and the diverse cast of panellists. Nothing about this on-screen death adds up.
Is just one of them a murderer? Or do they all have something to hide?

Her Rising Star is the third book in the Gloucestershire Crime Series, featuring DI Steph Lewis, a spirited, no-nonsense detective with secrets of her own.