Lost Souls is the third novel in the Detective Kate Ellis series. 

The body of a young woman is found in a maize field on the flight path to an airport. She appears to have fallen from the sky—a tragic stowaway who never made it to her destination. Months later, a man is assassinated in his car. On the same day, another stowaway is discovered alive, hidden in the wheel well of a cargo plane. The connection is impossible to ignore.

Detective Inspector Kate Ellis and the Soar Valley squad are drawn into an investigation that exposes a criminal pipeline built on false hope and human desperation. When the trail leads to South Africa, Kate joins a joint operation with the South African Police Service.

What they uncover is a smuggling network that feeds on the vulnerable, moving people like commodities and discarding them when they no longer serve a purpose. As the stakes rise, Kate must navigate unfamiliar ground where trust is fragile, power is jealously guarded, and violence arrives without warning.

Lost Souls, the seventh book in the Detective Kate Ellis series is a tense, compassionate crime novel about exploitation, the illegal trade in diamonds and the personal cost of caring.

Lost Souls will be published in late 2026.