The Mystery of a Turkish Bath

About the book

At a fashionable Hampshire hotel, the women taking Turkish baths discuss their ailments, clothes, and fellow guests with the confidence of experienced social observers. A beautiful newcomer unsettles their judgments, bringing a mysterious personal history and an interest in questions that polite conversation cannot easily contain. Her connections with Colonel Estcourt and her apparent command of unusual powers draw the company into increasingly serious speculation. Rita moves from satirical portraits of vanity and fashionable health treatments toward a supernatural mystery concerned with influence, belief, and the limits of ordinary explanation. Discussions of religion and science give the intrigue an argumentative dimension. The hotel's enclosed social world becomes a place where curiosity about another guest can turn into involvement in something much harder to dismiss.

• Belief and skepticism
• Social curiosity
• Occult influence

Why read it

The movement from sharp social comedy to supernatural uncertainty gives the hotel's everyday conversations an increasingly uneasy significance.

English text published under the pseudonym Rita