England, 1936Estranged from her family in the north, Londoner Alix Richardson dreams of Christmas at Wyncrag, her grandfather's great house above a lake that has frozen for the first time in fifteen years. But she returns to find the house–and her family–still caught in the icy grip of her iron-willed grandmother.As the Richardsons return to the winter wonderland of the frozen north, so too do others. Across the lake, at Grindley Hall, theatre director Hal Grindley comes home from New York with a secret of his own, to find his brothers all too anxious to relieve him of his share in the family business empire, while an enigmatic American film star adds a touch of mysterious glamour to the winter gathering.Against the glittering backdrop of winter parties and skating on the lake, both Alix and Hal have to face disturbing truths about their families, their pasts—and about the two black-shirted men from the south who have come to stay, bringing the long shadows of fascism to this remote corner of England.When one of the Blackshirts is found dead under the ice, the arrival of a Special Branch policeman gives urgency to Alix and Hal's inquiries and casts a sinister light on Lady Caroline's long reign at Wyncrag. But neither realises how dark their families' secrets are–or how a previous generation's tragedy has come back to haunt them...For fans of English sagas and the world of Downton Abbey, A Frozen Lake is an atmospheric, multi-layered story of great families, their eccentricities, and their secrets, set amid a the dramatic landscape of the English Lake District.