This causes a breach between Cora and Will. Cora begs her friend, Doctor Luke Garrett, to come down and investigate the medical reason behind the hysteria.

But then there's an incident at the school. Yet Will's wife Stella doesn't seem to mind, and Martha, well Martha has more important things to worry about. Everyone comments on their closeness, Cora even moves to Aldwinter. Will and Cora argue over everything, from religion to science, it is a meeting of true minds. Cora is fascinated by a pew in his church which is carved to represent the serpent, while Will is incensed by his parishioners obsession with folk tales and threatens to destroy the pew. Despite such an inauspicious beginning the two become fast friends. As fate would have it the Reverend Will Ransome is the man she helped to rescue the sheep. Through mutual friends she is introduced to the Ransomes who live in Aldwinter.

Cora longs to have her name next to such a find in a museum and therefore jumps at the opportunity that fate hands her. Cora doesn't believe in something so fanciful, but she does wonder, could a creature from long ago have survived in an out of the way place to be discovered in the present day? Might she find a living fossil? Science doesn't deny it is possible and her hero, Mary Anning, often hoped to make such a discovery. It's hunting the estuaries and killing children and pets. But soon Colchester is abuzz with rumors of the Essex Serpent. Once she even tangled with a man trying to rescue a sheep from the muck. Taking her household, which consists of her companion Martha and her disturbed son Francis, to Colchester, she spends her days mucking about the countryside wearing men's boots and unflattering clothing looking for ammonites. She can indulge her desire to be the next Mary Anning. The death of Cora Seaborne's abusive husband means she can finally cast aside the shackles of the life she was forced into. Book Review - Isabel Cañas's The Hacienda.Book Review - Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent.Book Review - Elspeth Barker's O Caledonia.Book Review - John Darnielle's Devil House.Book Review - David Mitchell's Slade House.Book Review - Kate Alice Marshall's Our Last Echoes.Book Review- Riley Sager's The House Across the Lake.

The essex serpent by sarah perry