A gripping and Gothic new historical mystery. Can she unlock the secrets of The House of Fever?

1935, Hedoné House, a luxurious sanatorium for the creative elite dedicated to the groundbreaking treatment of tuberculosis. As the doctor’s new wife, Agnes Templeton has pledged her life to a house of fever.

But Hedoné is no ordinary hospital. High society rubs shoulders with artists, poets and musicians. No expense is spared on the comfort of the guests, and champagne flows freely. It’s a world away from everything Agnes knows.

Her husband’s methods are unusual. There are whisperings about past patients and even a cure. Hedoné’s secrets draw Agnes in, revealing truths she could never anticipate, and soon she is caught between a past she is desperate to escape and a future she may forever regret.

My Review

The Unravelling (the author’s second novel) is probably one of my favourite books of all time, certainly of the decade. Therefore once again I had high expectations for The House of Fever and I was not disappointed.

Following the death of Agnes Templeton’s father from tuberculosis, Agnes and her mother have fallen on hard times. But while in France, Agnes meets the enigmatic Dr Christian Fairhaven and after a whirlwind romance, they marry. Christian is the owner of Hedoné, an exclusive sanatorium for TB patients who are either every rich like Juno Harrington, or very talented like Sippie and Georgie.

Christian brings Agnes and her mother, who is now very sick with TB over to England, promising to cure her mother with his revolutionary methods. Christian’s first wife also died of the disease and their young daughter Isobel needs a new mother.

But all is not as it seems at Hedoné where the champagne flows freely and the parties carry on through the night, and while the first half of the book is a bit of a slow burn (especially as an audio book), the secrets start to emerge. Towards the end they become more and more shocking and the ending is a triumphant masterpiece of intrigue and suspense.

I adored this book and look forward to the next one from Polly Crosby.

As an aside, both my parents had TB. My father was ill after the war (and a spell in a prisoner-of-war camp in Northern Russia) and was never totally cured. When he was ill in 2000, it returned. My mother had it years later and was ‘cured’ quickly with the drug streptomycin. I had to have a chest X-ray every six months – can’t remember for how long – even though I had had the BCG vaccination.

About the Author

Polly Crosby grew up on the Suffolk coast, and now lives with her husband and son in the heart of Norfolk.

In 2018, Polly won Curtis Brown Creative’s Yesterday Scholarship, enabling her to write her debut novel, The Illustrated Child. Later the same year, she was awarded runner-up in the Bridport Prize’s Peggy Chapman Andrews Award for a First Novel, and she received the Annabel Abbs Creative Writing Scholarship for the prestigious MA at the University of East Anglia.

Polly’s first book for Young Adults, This Tale is Forbidden, came out in January. Her fourth historical mystery, The House of Fever, was published in August 2024.