Inheritance of Secrets

A brutal murder. A wartime promise. A quest for the truth.

Heather Morris meets Jane Harper in a gripping, page-turning mystery.

No matter how far you run, the past will always find you.

Juliet's elderly grandparents are killed in their Adelaide home. Who would commit such a heinous crime - and why? The only clue is her grandfather Karl's missing signet ring.

When Juliet's estranged sister, Lily, returns in fear for her life, Juliet suspects something far more sinister than a simple break-in gone wrong. Before Juliet can get any answers, Lily vanishes once more.

Juliet only knew Karl Weiss as a loving grandfather, a German soldier who emigrated to Australia to build a new life. What was he hiding that could have led to his murder? While attempting to find out, Juliet uncovers some disturbing secrets from WWII that will put both her and her sister's lives in danger ...

Gripping. Tense. Mysterious. Inheritance of Secrets links the crimes of the present to the secrets of the past and asks how far would you go to keep a promise?

'The perfect combination of great historical fiction and a thriller ... highly recommend' Better Reading

'Captures the imagination from the first page' SA Weekend

'A tense compelling read; think Jane Harper's The Dry meets Heather Morris's The Tattooist of Auschwitz ... fast-paced story-telling with plenty of heart-stopping moments. If you want to lose yourself for several hours, this is a wonderful book to do it in.' Nadia L King

'A layered family drama of mysteries and long held loyalties' The Blurb

Sonya Bates is a Canadian writer who has made South Australia her home since 1997. She studied linguistics at the University of Victoria before obtaining a masters degree in speech-language pathology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Having worked with children with communication difficulties for over twenty-five years, she now enjoys sharing her knowledge with speech pathology students as a part-time clinical educator. When her two daughters were young, she started writing for children and has published several children's books. Her debut adult novel, Inheritance of Secrets, was shortlisted as an unpublished manuscript in the inaugural Banjo Prize in 2018.