Eleanor Rees

First draft

The Last Room at St. Cuthbert's

When a practical events planner is sent to rescue a half-empty heritage hotel in Durham, she discovers the building's last available room has become entangled with a difficult local historian who is determined to stop the place being turned into something shinier and less useful. Their forced cooperation starts as a nuisance and turns into a slow, inconvenient consideration of what each of them is really trying to preserve. The hotel, the city and their own carefully managed lives all become harder to keep at arm's length.