After a nine month estrangement, sisters Lily and Rose, are reunited in a hospital emergency room when the younger sister's husband has been badly injured in a car crash. While waiting for updates, they reminisce about their childhood memories in an effort to unearth the family tragedy - the death of their older sister Tansy. Lily and Rose begin to unravel the lies of omission that pulled them even farther apart.

Lies I Told My Sister is an exploration of how our community of loved ones can both buoy us up or tear us down. How innocently kept secrets can cause profound chasms.

Louise Ells combined random jobs (chef, roofer, co-pilot on a submarine) with years of travel before earning an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University, and a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University. Louise has taught grammar, poetry, and fiction, and presented at academic conferences in London, Cambridge, and Vienna. She works for Cambridge Programmes, teaching at Churchill College, Cambridge, for two weeks every summer. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2017. She lives in North Bay.

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A deeply affecting narrative that explores the most intimate of bonds as tragedy strikes a family and lies of omission and commission come to light. Ells has tenderly woven a tale lush with grief, fractured dreams and forgiveness as her beautifully rendered characters gradually reveal struggles with fertility, infidelity and missed opportunities. There is a delicate lyricism to this exquisite tale as Ells gently amplifies the desire to safeguard and protect those who are loved.

-Lucy E.M. Black, author The Brickworks, Stella's Carpet, Eleanor Courtown, The Marzipan Fruit Basket