CULTURE anna mazzola started her writing career as a finalist in Grazia’s First chapter competition. here’s what we thought of The Unseeing (£14.99, michael Joseph)

ELIZABETH LISMORE Grazia’s freelance sub-editor

I love a good whodunnit, especially one set in the atmospheric murk of Dickensian London. Anna Mazzola’s characters grip you from page one as she sets the scene for a grisly murder (based on a real case from 1836) and the ensuing plot encompasses a love triangle and every strata of Victorian society. The fate of Sarah Gale and her little boy George kept me hooked.

EMILY PHILLIPS Grazia’s features and special projects editor

I studied Victorian history keenly at university, and loved being thrown into the sights and smells of London 1837. Convict Sarah Gale – a seamstress and mother before the calamitous death of a young bride – is beguiling in her inability to reveal her secret, but lawyer Edmund won’t let the truth go to her grave.

ZOE CRONIN Grazia’s deputy chief sub-editor

With the pinprick criminal detailing of The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher, The Unseeing engulfs you in a heady, addictive fog from the very start. Charged with being an accomplice in a gruesome murder, is Sarah Gale an innocent wronged or a killer with a secret? Lawyer Edmund Fleetwood looks into her case and takes ever deeper steps into the quicksand of her world.