Delphine Woods

Delphine Woods writes historical and gothic mystery fiction built around women whose records have been obscured or dismissed. Woman on Ward 13 opens the Iris Lowe Mysteries and uses two connected timelines. In 1900, Katy Owen begins work as an attendant caring for Persephone Leverton, whose account of a long-buried crime challenges the institution’s version of her history. In 1956, nurse Iris Lowe encounters an elderly patient whose first visitor in decades leads her toward a diary and the same unresolved past. Woods describes the novel as both gothic historical mystery and time-slip fiction, with Smedley Hospital linking the two periods. Other published work includes The Convenient Woman Collection, The Shepherdess, and other historical mysteries. Woman on Ward 13 establishes her recurring interest in testimony, institutional power, and the recovery of women’s stories. By placing care workers in both timelines, the novel asks how professional duty changes when official explanations no longer account for what the women themselves remember.