A crumbling house, a woman alone and an ancient diary set the scene for this supernatural debut. Echoing the gothic tone of Susan Hill, this is a thumb-pricking, heart-stopping delight.
Chosen for the Zoe Ball Book Club
Inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson and Susan Hill and set in a crumbling country mansion, The Silent Companions is an unsettling gothic ghost story to send a shiver down the spine...
She pulled a page towards her. In the gloom she saw a void of white, waiting for her words. She swallowed the pain in her throat. How could she relive it? How could she bring herself to do it to them, all over again? She peered into the blank page, trying to see, somewhere in its vast expanse of nothing, that other woman from long ago.
Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge.
With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks.
For inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure - a Silent Companion - that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...
'Layering on the dark and creepy, this intriguingly plotted novel is the full-blown Gothic, maintaining throughout an unsettling claustrophobic atmosphere mixed with some unusual historical detail' - Daily Mail
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781408888032
Number of pages: 384
Weight: 273 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
Ghost stories are for Christmas. Some recent ones haven't quite got it right but this is terrific. Perfect setting, great build-up, chilling. What more could you want ? - Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black
Layering on the dark and creepy, this intriguingly plotted novel is the full-blown Gothic, maintaining throughout an unsettling claustrophobic atmosphere mixed with some unusual historical detail - Daily Mail
A deliciously creepy ghost story - Sunday Express
Laura Purcell has nailed it with a story that conjures up Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black, Henry James’s The Turn Of The Screw and a little bit of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - Emerald Street
A perfect read for a winter night … Intriguing, nuanced and genuinely eerie - Guardian
A creepy, unsettling tale that I had to finish reading in broad daylight - Stylist, 'Must-Read Books'
A sinister slice of Victorian gothic... creepy and page-turning - The Times
Really tense and unnerving, it still won't let me go - Woman & Home
A true page-turner...neatly crafted and compelling...with a spine-tingling revelation every few pages - Times Literary Supplement
Irresistibly creepy, this romps along, Purcell turning her screws with skill. It's what crumpets and dismal afternoons were made for - Glamour
Writing in the tradition of country house ghost stories, Laura Purcell has created a book that is unnerving and compelling in equal measure. The Silent Companions is an atmospheric gothic tale which chills the blood - Sophia Tobin, author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Silversmith’s Wife and The Widow’s Confession
Not since The Little Stranger has a book so entranced and haunted me. Compelling, bewitching and beautifully written. Read it if you dare - Anna Mazzola, author of The Unseeing
A superbly atmospheric, tense novel full of creeping dread. I could only read it during daylight hours! - Red
A brilliant, unsettling debut. Don’t read just before bedtime! - Prima
If The Silent Companions lands on your night table, don't plan on leaving your bed anytime soon. Immersive, meticulous, and reminiscent of the masters of gothic fiction – not only a compulsively readable ghost story, but a skillful, loving ode to the entire genre - Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of Gotham
Frighteningly atmospheric, genuinely haunting and psychologically astute, the horror of The Silent Companions lingers like truth in the darkest corners of the human mind - Helen Sedgwick, author of The Comet Seekers
This incredibly creepy ghost story plays out in the very best tradition against a backdrop of a crumbling house … Superb - Saga
Things begin to go bump in broad daylight as well as the night. Compulsively creepy - Sunday Mirror
Menacing and unsettling - Psychologies
Compelling and claustrophobic. The pages all but turn by themselves - Essie Fox, author of The Last Days of Leda Grey
Magnificently creepy … I really wished it were longer - Natasha Pulley, author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
You may want to leave the light on once you put down this intensely spooky Gothic chiller ... Irresistibly creepy - The People
It seems like a perfect setting for a ghost story, an old gothic house, in a small village. It is unsettling and full of unusual people. You wonder what is going on. You do not know what to expect...
When Elsie's...
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This compelling, atmospheric and tremendously chilling novel is one of the best gothic tales I have read in a long time.
Reminiscent of Susan Hill, Edith Wharton's ghost stories and Henry James, 'The Silent...
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I absolutely loved this very creepy gothic book! I loved the way the story moved between two different times. It started off quite slowly but you could feel that something awful is just lurking beneath the surface,... More
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