Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread
  • Published: 15 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9780857506474
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
15 Jul 2025
EBook
20 Mar 2025
Hardback
20 Apr 2025
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A 1920s-set cosy historical mystery. When one of dressmaker Rose’s clients is swindled by a deceitful suitor, Rose can’t resist being drawn into the investigation…

Rose had the sense of a thread being pulled. One tug and everything could unravel.

South-east London, 1925.

Talented, ambitious designer-dressmaker Rose Burnham knows well both the strains of her profession and the secrets it can yield. Newly established in her own business, she and her sisters are privy to the hushed conversations that unspool behind the fitting room’s closed doors.

So when a major client finds herself the victim of a deception, it is Rose she tells. Driven by the shortage of men following the Great War, Miss Holmes had engaged the services of a matrimonial agency, only to be cheated out of her inheritance by a fake suitor.

Rose is determined to bring the swindler to justice. To begin with, playing the detective is a grand adventure, but as pressures mount and an old friend receives a troubling string of poison-pen letters, Rose discovers there is more to investigating – and these investigations – than she’d bargained for.
  • Published: 15 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9780857506474
  • Imprint: Bantam
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

About the author

Lynn Knight

Lynn Knight was born in Derbyshire and lives in London. The women of her family, who have passed on many stories along with beaded bags and buttoned gauntlets, fostered her interest in the texture and narratives of women's lives. She is also the author of the biography Clarice Cliff (2005), and a memoir, Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue: The Story of an Accidental Family (2011).

portrait photo of Lynn Knight

Also by Lynn Knight

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Praise for Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread

A hat box of delights, full of period detail and thoroughly enjoyable

Claire Wilcox, author of Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes, and Professor in Fashion Curation at the London College of Fashion

The House of Eliott meets Miss Marple in Lynn Knight’s superb fiction debut. As well as being an exquisite mystery, Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is an ode to the pioneering women who embraced new opportunities in the aftermath of The Great War. I loved it!

Jessica Bull, author of Miss Austen Investigates

Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is a joy of a read. A superbly researched story of post-WW1 female friendship chock-a-block with characters you’ll cheer on to the very last page, I read it cover to cover in a day

AJ Pearce, Sunday Times bestselling author of Dear Mrs Bird

A seamless blend of elegance and drama, stitched together with exquisite skill . . . Phantom Thread meets Miss Marple

Orlando Murrin, author of KNIFE SKILLS FOR BEGINNERS

What’s more enthralling than women helping women — to reclaim fortunes, achieve justice, or get a worthy business off the ground? Rose Burnham is an admirable protagonist, full of courage, charm, talent, and empathy. I had the best time rooting for her every success. Lynn Knight has written a novel for everyone who’s ever cheered on a friend or sister. It’s suspenseful, enchanting, and uplifting: a pure delight.

Nina de Gramont, author of THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR

I thoroughly enjoyed this charming historical mystery and raced through it. Knight portrays the struggles of ‘surplus’ women in the 1920s convincingly, and the detailed description of threads, silks, and sewing techniques is, at times, exquisite

Joanna Miller, author of THE EIGHTS

Delightful is the word. Women supporting women in sisterhood and friendship. A glorious glut of period details - how you will long for a cloche hat. A comforting, delicious buttered crumpet of a novel

Natasha Poliszcuk, Content Director of BookBrunch

In Miss Burnham we find all of the charms of a 1920s dressmaking studio with some sleuthing on the side. It is the perfect combination

Kate Strasdin, author of THE DRESS DIARY OF MRS ANNE SYKES