Francesca May

Francesca May grew up in the middle of England and works as a bookseller at the Waterstones in Derby, using that name for fantasy and Fran Dorricott for psychological thrillers, a line that began with After the Eclipse in 2019. Wild and Wicked Things, published in 2022, is set on Crow Island in the years after the First World War, a holiday place where magic is understood to exist and disapproved of anyway. Annie Mason arrives to settle her late father's estate, finds her childhood friend Bea absorbed into a faster crowd, and is drawn to Cross House next door, where Emmeline Delacroix is rumoured to serve forbidden magic at her parties. Publishers Weekly admired the atmosphere while finding the story slow-moving. This Vicious Hunger followed, in which a widow named Thora Grieve takes up botany and becomes entangled with a young woman who tends a walled garden after dark.