Suddenly life is horrifyingly much more interesting. And then Violet's best friend disappears too. Then young girls start going missing, and turning up murdered. Joseph, her long-lost brother, comes home. He blows up Violet's grey little life, and she can't believe her luck. Beau's a Rocker-a motorcycle boy who arrives in an explosion of passion and rebellion. And it doesn't look like fame and fortune are going to come calling anytime soon. She was born at the exact moment Winston Churchill announced Victory in Europe-an auspicious start, but now she's just stuck in her family's fish and chip shop dreaming of greatness. The world is changing-but not for 16-year-old Violet.

But as Alice becomes more deeply drawn into the life of Prince's strange religious sect, secrets are revealed that seem to hint at a darker nature lurking behind the man's charm.Battersea, 1961: London is just beginning to enter the swinging sixties. Prince ignites a passion in Alice that she never knew existed, and she dares to think she might be free at last. She escapes to join the Agapemonites in their Abode of Love, where ex-Reverend Henry Prince rules his isolated colony of women as their Beloved. After a chance encounter with a charming stranger, and a final incident with her family that sees her condemned to the madhouse, Alice sees her opportunity to run and grasps it with both hands. A constant disappointment to all but her doting father, she longs for the day that she might break free from the stifling atmosphere of her mother's rule. Instead of freedom, is Alice in fact more trapped, alone and in danger than ever before?Įscape from a bullying mother takes one young woman to an even more dangerous place.Alice Angel has known only a life of rules, restriction and punishments as she strays from the rigid path of Victorian proprietary that her mother has set out for her. But as Alice becomes more deeply drawn into the life of Prince's strange religious sect, secrets are revealed that seem to hint at a darker nature lurking behind the man's charm.

Escape from a bullying mother takes one young woman to an even more dangerous place.Alice Angel has known only a life of rules, restriction and punishments as she strays from the rigid path of Victorian proprietary that her mother has set out for her.

The Beloved by Alison Rattle