I picked this one up because it was written by the woman who wrote the Woman in Black and the Man in the Portrait, both Victorian style "horror" stories that I really liked. This one concerns her detective Simon Serrailler and the blurb on the back says this is "her most gripping psychological t...
When I came across Susan Hill as a judge for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, I remembered that she is best known for her ghost stories and her much hyped Mrs De Winter, a sequel to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. More recently she has turned to writing crime stories featuring DCI Simon Serrailler. The Ri...
Ultra disappointed..now okay I had a good time with this author a few years ago and I remember the novel "The Various Haunts of Men" as being well written and a mystery that I wanted to continue..I was ready for more of the same with this book but unfortunately it ended terribly, built up a story...
Originally Reviewed on The Book SmugglersOn a crisp Christmas eve, the elderly Arthur Kipps rests contentedly in front of a roaring fire, surrounded by his stepchildren and loving wife Esme. All is at peace with Arthur's world; all is as it should be. But when the young men start to tell ghost st...
Basic OverviewThe Various Haunts of Men centers on a series of disappearances in the English town of Lafferton. The first to disappear is a spinster who leads a quiet, regimented life ... but leaves behind one out-of-character clue in her sterile, empty home. Although Freya Graffham -- the talent...
It must take a brave author to do a follow on book to Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’, but this is what Susan Hill has done. I think Rebecca was calling out for a sequel though – when I read the book I kept looking for more pages to read, the ending was so underwhelming.The good points of Susan H...
Where I got the book: audiobook on Audible.Ah, Lafferton, Lafferton. A small cathedral town must be a terrible place to live if serial killers pop up as regularly as they do in this series—I wouldn’t dare leave the house. Add in the high incidence of Sudden Death from natural causes, suicide and ...
Having just finished one book of short stories, I didn't expect to follow it with another, but I found this lying around and after I read the very contrasting reviews on GR, decided to make up my own mind before starting something meatier.They are good, but all are concerned with loss in some for...
A terrifying ghost story by the author of The Woman in Black...One dark and rainy night, Sir James Monmouth returns to London after years spent travelling alone.Intent on uncovering the secrets of his childhood hero, the mysterious Conrad Vane, he begins to investigate Vane’s life, but he finds h...
An extraordinary ghost story from a modern master, published just in time for Halloween. In the apartment of Oliver's old professor at Cambridge, there is a painting on the wall, a mysterious depiction of masked revelers at the Venice carnival. On this cold winter's night, the old professor has d...
Furnished with a spotless reputation and an unimpeachable record as a don, the Reverend Thomas Cavendish is destined to become Master of his Cambridge college. Fending off the attentions of the young Florence, a friend of his sister's who has set her heart on marrying him, he dedicates himself to...
What happens to a family when one of the brothers publishes his “misery memoir?” Is his litany of childhood torment a complete invention? Or was there really a cupboard under the stairs? The farmhouse was called The Beacon and they had been born and reared there, May, Colin, Frank and Berenice, ...
Kay was turning a face flannel over and over between her hands, quite pointlessly. ‘Dying. Do you mean about dying?’ ‘That. Yes.’ They were silent, contemplating it, the truth sinking in at last with the speaking of the word. In the room across the landing their mother was dying. ‘I really meant ...
Ida Minns commented in this way, first to her husband and daughter, then to several friends. She did not speak to Rose because, in truth, she did not care for her daughter-in-law and had disapproved of the marriage from the outset. But she held Rose’s mother in reserve, to speak to if things went...
There was no time for Tommy to run for the midwife, but hearing the sounds, Mary Ankerby came, in time to see the child, a small, dark-haired girl, lying next to Eve on the bed, mad as a wasp and still attached to the cord, which Mary cut deftly, having had seven of her own and all born at 5 The ...
She turned over and pulled her knees up and for a moment sank back into the muddy half-sleep she had been dragged from, but then it was hurting her in the small of the back, a regular hard thump of a pain.Then the noise, low at first, but growing louder, insistent in her ears.‘Maaaaam, Maaaammmm....
I was standing as I had stood that evening beside the broken-down gate that led into the garden of the White House, only this time it was not evening but night, a cold, clear night with a sky sown with glittering stars. I was alone and I was waiting. I knew that I was waiting but for whom I waite...
They had not yet lit the lamp. The setting sun splashed scarlet across the sky above the roofs of the square and the room was briefly on fire around them. They sat opposite one another at the table, books spread. Flora did not speak, could not have told what had happened. That day was packed tigh...
That, he said, was the whole point of moving here, to go out for walks.‘Nature,’ he said. ‘You don’t just look at it, do you?’For the time being she would have been happy to do that. She was bone-tired. Even her brain was tired. Filling the packing cases, cleaning the old flat for the people who ...
You’d better come in.’ Mrs Mullen looked down at the boy’s bags, both small. The taxi had already turned and started down the long straight road twelve miles back to the station. ‘Well, pick them up.’ She had no intention of waiting on two children. ‘Oh. Yes.’ She did not know how a boy of eight ...
. .’ ‘It’s an anniversary. I’m no good at them but this is different . . . Rachel?’ He knew what the silence was about and it was not because she didn’t want to have the dinner, didn’t want to be with him, didn’t want to remember. It was Kenneth. Always. ‘He had an awful attack last night – I had...
SIMON Serrailler.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘Please don’t hang up. Just listen to me.’ ‘I don’t –’ ‘Is your husband going to be at home this morning?’ ‘He usually is Saturday mornings, though not in the afternoons, not usually Saturday evenings either. He coaches junior football and then he’s at the pub.’ ‘Fine. I’...