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You need to be rich to survive at all. But it’s easier to be dead than poor.

Twenty-first-century New York. It’s a nightmare. Reaganomics has gone mad. There’s murder and mutilation on the bombed-out streets and in the corporate conference rooms. Manhattan is a zoo. There’s guerrilla war on Long Island.

Seamus O’Malley is a bodyguard and assassin in the outrageously powerful Dryco organisation, and he’s in deep trouble. Taking the job sounded like a good idea at the time. Falling in love with his employer’s mistress, Avalon, probably wasn’t so bright. Getting caught up in the Dryden family’s crazy rivalries didn’t help. Agreeing to murder the Old Man was plain stupid. And getting involved with the Ambients could only complicate matters further.

Before long, O’Malley’s on the run, and there’s nowhere safe to hide.

The world that Man has known for close on twenty thousand years had been overthrown in a holocaust of atomic fire and annihilation. The immense and complex system of civilisation had been utterly destroyed almost overnight and only a scant handful of true humans remained.

Stretched out between the rivers of radioactive fire, the cities were growing wildernesses of shattered stone and brick, splintered glass and silent streets. But here and there in quiet places sheltered from the deadly rains, men waited for the fires to subside and hoped to rebuilt something a little like the civilisation which had existed before.

This is the stirring and sometimes terrible story of the supreme struggle for survival, when the continued existence of the human race on Earth is uncertain after such a tremendous catastrophe, and when all life is menaced by the wandering bands of mutants, creatures spawned and tainted by the deadly radiation.

A Wall Street trader leaves the bulls and bears – and comes face-to-face with hungrier dinosaurs. A Roaring ’20s gangster gets roughed up – by real cavemen. A pioneer hitches up his covered wagon on the Oregon Trail – and winds up in a modern shopping mall. And Roger Tyson, who thought the space-time continuum had finally settled down to normal, is flung helplessly from the distant past to the far future, and back again.

Superbeings from the end of time are struggling for control of the universe with aliens from another galaxy. And if a few random humans get caught in one of their time gates, they don’t much care. So Roger and his friends find themselves facing everyone from the cast of the original Mutiny on the Bounty to real pirates of the Spanish Main in a wild quest to their own time and bring everything back to insanity as usual…

As an orphan growing up in the slums, Loren read her clandestine copy of Jane’s Story over and over, relishing every word. But Loren is no Jane. Savvy and street-smart, Loren could never be stirred by a man of metal, her passion never ignited by an almost-human – even one designed for pleasure.

Still, when the META corporation does the unthinkable and brings back updated versions of robots past-Loren knows she must see Silver. And just like Jane, it is love at first sight. But Silver is now Verlis. If he was perfection before, he is now like a god. Yet he is more human than his creators think – or fear. While Loren doesn’t quite trust him, she will follow her twice-born lover into a battle to control his own destiny – one that
will reveal to her the most astonishing illusion of all.

All of a sudden I was moving faster than usual. The other passengers standing on the subway platform seemed rooted to their places. It took me only seconds to reach the top of the six flights of stairs, and then I was out of the station and moving down Fulton Street at better than forty miles an hour!

What was happening to me? It was as though I were the helpless passenger in a runaway car. Something else had assumed control and was guiding me.

My body turned into an office building and raced down the corridor to a room where a man was sitting at a console. He’d begun to swing around in his chair when my mouth opened, and a thin, blood-red ray shot out, cleaving the man from head to abdomen.

Then it was over. My mouth closed, and I stood there, stunned. Up to today I was Bob Tanner, an average, sane Citizen. Now what was I, man or murder machine?

The year is 1610. Continental Europe is briefly at peace after years of war, but Henri IV of France is planning to invade the German principalities. In England, only five years earlier, conspirators nearly succeeded in blowing up King James I and his Parliament. The seeds of the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War are visibly being sown, and the possibility for both enlightenment and disaster abounds.

But Valentin Rochefort, duelist and spy for France’s powerful financial minister, could not care less. Until he is drawn into the glittering palaces, bawdy back streets, and stunning theatrics of Renaissance France and Shakespearean London in a deadly plot both to kill King James I and to save him. For this swordsman without a conscience is about to find himself caught between loyalty, love, and blackmail, between kings, queens, politicians, and Rosicrucians, and the woman he has, unknowingly, crossed land and sea to meet.

Nick Walker can pass for eighteen, which comes in useful while living on the streets. But Nick isn’t eighteen. He’s fourteen. He’s been fourteen for years . . .

A chance encounter with Manta, an exceedingly powerful witch, sees Nick cursed with changelessness. Not only will he never age, but, more usefully to Manta, broken bones and sliced flesh, while excruciatingly painful, will mend themselves in a short space of time – making Nick the perfect weapon against the demonic assassins sent by the evil Cartel. Constantly hunted, Nick is forced to run – evading his enemy when he can and facing gruesome and bloody battles when he can’t.

But, help comes from a surprising source – April, a young girl Nick rescues from some occult enthusiasts intent on sacrificing her, has powers beyond her control or understanding. Together, might they be a match for the sinister forces that stalk them?

‘Nobody but Dorothy Hughes can cast suspense into such an uncanny spell, and she’s never done it better’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘An excellent novel . . . A sympathetic study of the development of a criminal’ New York Times

It’s carnival time in Santa Fe, and three out-of-town visitors are drawn together in the heat, the smells and the colour of the festival . .

Sailor, a hood from Chicago, is there to confront his boss, Sen, a crooked politician, to try to get money for what he knows about the murder of Sen’s wife, killed supposedly during a robbery gone wrong.

Following them both is Mac, a man from the same side of the tracks as Sailor, but who has made very different choices. He’s a cop now, and wants Sailor to testify against Sen and put him away.

The three strangers collide, retreat and advance through the streets of New Mexico, moving ever closer to a charged and unexpected outcome . . .

The perfect Halloween novel!

‘Glaister has the uncomfortable knack of putting her finger on things we most fear, of exposing the darkness within’ Independent on Sunday

‘Before Gillian Flynn, there was Lesley Glaister’ Harper’s Bazaar

All Nell’s life, Olive Owen has lived next door but one. And all her life, Nell has hated her. Even at school Olive had sparkled indecently, turning heads. Nell has a son, her pleasure and her shame, though now she lives alone. Nell is sharp in all the places Olive is round.

When Wolfe moves into the house in between them, their quiet street is transformed. A lonely, spirited eight-year-old boy, he knocks on their doors at Halloween and invites them to his bonfire party. As the fireworks flare, he finds himself in the middle of an ancient conflict, grudges bared and burning with a fury he could never have imagined.

‘A perfect, black little tale’ Observer

A man walks into a bar. A dispute ensues, and the bartender kills him. He’s sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. In prison, the convict, Wardlin Stuart, writes prayers addressed to no god in particular. Inexplicably, his prayers – whether it’s a request for a girlfriend or a special favor for a fellow inmate – are answered, be it in days or weeks. When his collection of supplications, A Handbook of American Prayer, is published by a New York press, Stuart emerges a celebrity author. Settling into a new life in Arizona, he encounters a fundamentalist minister. The two are destined for a confrontation. In the interim, it seems that the god to whom Stuart has been praying has manifested himself on the earth. In this short novel about America’s conflicting love triangle – celebrity, spirituality, and money – Shepard negotiates the thin line between the real and the surreal, expounding upon violence and redemption along the way. this story of an unlikely American messiah shows why The Wall Street Journal has compared Shepard, an award-winning author, to Graham Greene, Robert Stone, and Ward Just.

Dr John West, Cambridge don and private investigator, was present at the trial of an odd duck, R. A. Adcock, who was being most uncooperative in answering questions about a bank robbery. At length, Adcock had made a dash for it from the courtroom – through a glass window, and what should have been a three storey drop to the street. But suddenly, Adcock wasn’t there, and at once a swarm of bees came into the courtroom.

Thus begins The Molecule Men, which takes many fascinating and terrifying turns to its chilling conclusion.

In the second story, the Monster of Loch Ness, Tom Cochrane, an independent scientist, determines to find out why the waters of Loch Ness are inexplicably warming up. What was it that caused the waters of the loch to pour up into the air like the worst rainstorm any of the observers had ever seen? What was at the bottom of the loch?
These two short novels by a celebrated father and son team will hold the interest of the science fiction fan from page one on.

They came out of the long grey ages of Time, killing and plundering, and their object was to take back captives to appease the blood-thirsty mobs. The city was burning when Paul Sanders drove into it that wet and foggy evening, the streets filled with tall, cruel-faced warriors.

Taken prisoner by them, he and a handful of others found themselves transported in Time to the world of a million years hence. A strange world filled with the weirdest anachronisms where a superstitious people were held in thrall by three men, the Time Kings, who alone knew the secret of time travel.

The ancient knowledge had been destroyed by a people smarting under utter defeat. During the long ages there had been three Interstellar Empires when Earth had reigned supreme throughout the galaxy, but it remained for a group of men from the early dawn of the Atomic Age to overthrow the anarchy which prevailed and to restore Earth to her previous position of greatness, leading the people back to the stars which were their destiny.

The adventures of Li-lin, a Daoist priestess with the unique ability to see the spirit world, continue in the thrilling follow-up to the critically-acclaimed historical urban fantasy The Girl with Ghost Eyes.

It’s the end of the Nineteenth Century. San Francisco’s cobblestone streets are haunted, but Chinatown has an unlikely protector in a young Daoist priestess named Li-lin. Using only her martial arts training, spiritual magic, a sword made from peachwood, and the walking, talking spirit of a human eye, Li-lin stands alone to defend her immigrant community from supernatural threats.

But when the body of a young girl is brought to the deadhouse Li-lin oversees for a local group of gangsters, she faces her most bewildering-and potentially dangerous-assignment yet. The nine-year-old has died from suffocation . . . specifically by flowers growing out of her nose and mouth. Li-lin suspects Gong Tau, a dirty and primitive form of dark magic. But who is behind the spell, and why, will take her on a perilous journey deep into a dangerous world of ghosts and spirits.

It is a new world, stunned by the horrors that linger in the aftermath of total war. The United States and Soviet Union are squaring off in a different kind of conflict, one that’s fought in the shadows, where there are whispers of strange and mysterious developments. . .

Normal people across the United States have inexplicably gained paranormal abilities. A factory worker can heal the sick and injured. A schoolteacher bends emotions to her will. A car salesman alters matter with a simple touch. A former soldier speaks to the dying and gains their memories as they pass on.

They are the Variants, controlled by a secret government program called MAJESTIC-12 to open a new front in the Cold War.

From the deserts of Nevada to the palaces of Istanbul, the halls of power in Washington to the dark, oppressive streets of Prague, the Variants are thrown into a deadly game of shifting alliances. Amidst the seedy underbelly of nations, these once-ordinary Americans dropped in extraordinary circumstances will struggle to come to terms with their abilities as they fight to carve out a place for themselves in a world that may ultimately turn against them.

And as the MAJESTIC-12 program will soon discover, there are others out there like them, some with far more malevolent goals. . .

Welcome to the Tomorrow Factory.

On your left, post-human hedonists on a distant space station bring diseases back in fashion, two scavengers find a super-powered parasite under the waves of Sunk Seattle, and a terminally-ill chemist orchestrates an asteroid prison break.

On your right, an alien optometrist spins illusions for irradiated survivors of the apocalypse, a high-tech grifter meets his match in near-future Thailand, and two teens use a blackmarket personality mod to get into the year’s wickedest, wildest party.

This collection of published and original fiction by award-winning writer Rich Larson will bring you from a Bujumbura cyberpunk junkyard to the icy depths of Europa, from the slick streets of future-noir Chicago to a tropical island of sapient robots. You’ll explore a mysterious ghost ship in deep space, meet an android learning to dream, and fend off predatory alien fungi on a combat mission gone wrong.

Twenty-three futures, ranging from grimy cyberpunk to far-flung space opera, are waiting to blow you away.

So step inside the Tomorrow Factory, and mind your head.

A decade dead, Jacob Campbell is a preservationist, providing a kind of taxidermy to keep his clients looking lifelike for as long as the forces of entropy will allow. But in the Land of the Dead, where the currency is time itself and there is little for corpses to do but drink, thieve, and gamble eternity away, Jacob abandons his home and his fortune for an opportunity to meet the man who cheated the rules of life and death entirely.

According to legend, the Living Man is the only adventurer to ever cross into the underworld without dying first. It’s rumored he met his end somewhere in the labyrinth of pubs beneath Dead City’s streets, disappearing without a trace. Now Jacob’s vow to find the Living Man and follow him back to the land of the living sends him on a perilous journey through an underworld where the only certainty is decay.

Accompanying him are the boy Remington, an innocent with mysterious powers over the bones of the dead, and the hanged man Leopold l’Eclair, a flamboyant rogue whose criminal ambitions spark the undesired attention of the shadowy ruler known as the Magnate.

An ambitious debut that mingles the fantastic with the philosophical, Dead Boys twists the well-worn epic quest into a compelling, one-of-a-kind work of weird fiction that transcends genre, recalling the novels of China Miéville and Neil Gaiman.

The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece and Rome had returned to Earth – with all their awesome powers intact. Overnight, Earth was transformed. War on any scale was outlawed, along with boom-and-bust economic cycles, and prudery. No change was more startling than the face of New York, where the Empire State Building became the Tower of Zeus.

In this totally altered world, William Forrester is an acolyte of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and a teacher of history. Only Maya Wilson, one of his students and a worshipper of Venus, Goddess of Love, had a different sort of grading in mind. Maya is the first of the many Trials of Forrester, every bit as mighty and perilous as the Labors of Hercules. In love with Gerda Symes (like him, a devotee of Athena and a frequenter of the great Temple of Pallas Athena – formerly known as the 42nd Street Library) and dedicated to the pleasures of the mind – Forrester falls under the soft, compelling pressure of soft, compelling devotees of Venus and Bacchus. He’s going to be in need of all the strength that he and his Goddess, the beautiful and intellectual Athena, can muster!

Into this sensuous strife stride the Temple Myrmidons – religious cops sworn to obey orders without question or hesitation – with a pickup order for William Forrester. Where he is taken, what happens to him, and the truly fantastic discoveries he makes about himself and the Gods and Goddesses … here are the ingredients that make up this science fiction novel of suspense, intrigue, mystery and danger!

Billy Byrne squared his broad shoulders and filled his deep lungs with the familiar medium which is known as air in Chicago. He was standing upon the platform of a New York Central train that was pulling into the La Salle Street Station, and though the young man was far from happy something in the nature of content pervaded his being, for he was coming home. After something more than a year of world wandering and strange adventure Billy Byrne was coming back to the great West Side and Grand Avenue. Now there is not much upon either side or down the center of long and tortuous Grand Avenue to arouse enthusiasm, nor was Billy particularly enthusiastic about that more or less squalid thoroughfare. The thing that exalted Billy was the idea that he was coming back to show them. He had left under a cloud and with a reputation for genuine toughness and rowdyism that has seen few parallels even in the ungentle district of his birth and upbringing.


A girl had changed him. She was as far removed from Billy’s sphere as the stars themselves; but Billy had loved her and learned from her, and in trying to become more as he knew the men of her class were he had sloughed off much of the uncouthness that had always been a part of him, and all of the rowdyism.


Billy Byrne was no longer the mucker.

Once, Xhea’s wants were simple: enough to eat, safety in the underground, and the hit of bright payment to transform her gray-cast world into color. But in the aftermath of her rescue of the Radiant ghost Shai, she realizes the life she had known is gone forever.

In the two months since her fall from the City, Xhea has hidden in skyscraper Edren, sheltered and attempting to heal. But soon even she must face the troubling truth that she might never walk again. Shai, ever faithful, has stayed by her side-but the ghost’s very presence has sent untold fortunes into Edren’s coffers and dangerously unbalanced the Lower City’s political balance.

War is brewing. Beyond Edren’s walls, the other skyscrapers have heard tell of the Radiant ghost and the power she holds; rumors, too, speak of the girl who sees ghosts who might be the key to controlling that power. Soon, assassins stalk the skyscrapers’ darkened corridors while armies gather in the streets. But Shai’s magic is not the only prize-nor the only power that could change everything. At last, Xhea begins to learn of her strange dark magic, and why even whispers of its presence are enough to make the Lower City elite tremble in fear.

Together, Xhea and Shai may have the power to stop a war-or become a weapon great enough to bring the City to its knees. That is, if the magic doesn’t destroy them first.

Remember what it’s like to last an entire night without sleep? That dull but constant headache. The feeling of your brain on edge. How easily irritated you were. How difficult it was to concentrate, even on seemingly menial tasks. It was just a single restless night, but everything felt just a little bit harder to do, and the only real comfort was knowing your head would finally hit the pillow at the end of the day, and when you awoke the next morning everything would return to normal.

But what if sleep didn’t come the next night? Or the night after? What might happen if you, your friends and family, your coworkers, the strangers you pass on the street, all slowly began to realize that rest might not ever come again?

How slowly might the world fall apart? How long would it take for a society without sleep to descend into chaos?

Sleep Over is collection of waking nightmares, a scrapbook of the haunting and poignant stories from those trapped in a world where the pillars of society are crumbling, and madness is slowly descending on a planet without rest.

Online vigilantism turns social media into a deadly gamble.

A freelance journalist grapples with the ethics of turning in footage of mass suicide.

A kidnapped hypnotist is held hostage by those at wit’s end for a cure.

In Sleep Over, these stories are just the beginning. Before the Longest Day, the world record was eleven days without sleep. It turns out most of us can go much longer.

Lucius Shepard is a grand master of dark fantasy, famed for his baroque yet utterly contemporary visions of existential subversion and hallucinatory collapse. In Dagger Key, his fifth major story collection, Shepard confronts hard-bitten loners and self-deceiving operators with the shadowy emptiness within themselves and the insinuating darkness without, to ends sardonic and terrifying. The stories in this book, including six novellas, are:


“Stars Seen Through Stone” – in a small Pennsylvania town, mediocrity suddenly blossoms into genius; but at what terrible cost?


“Emerald Street Expansions” – in near-future Seattle, echoes of the life of a medieval French poet hint at either reincarnation or a dire conspiracy.


“Limbo” – a retired criminal on the run from the Mafia encounters ghosts, and much worse, on the shores of a haunted lake.


“Liar’s House” – in the grip of the legendary dragon Griaule, destiny is a treacherous and transformative thing.


“Dead Monty” – a small-time New Orleans criminal ventures outside his proper territory, and poker and voudoun conspire to bring him down.


“Dinner at Baldassaro’s” – a gang of immortals debates the future in an Italian resort, only for events to outrun any of their expectations.


“Abimagique” – a glib college loser falls in love with a witch, becoming an involuntary part of a world-saving – or world-destroying – magical ritual.


“The Lepidopertrist” – a small boy on a Caribbean island witnesses the creation of preternatural beings by a Yankee wizard…


“Dagger Key” – off the coast of Belize, the ghost of a famous pirate seems to control a spiral of murder and intrigue; or is someone else responsible?

Widely acclaimed as one of the first successful female science fiction authors, Mildred Clingerman returns with the exciting follow up to her 1961 science fiction collection, A Cupful of Space. Her stories tend to wed a literate tone to subject matters whose ominousness is perhaps more submerged than the horrors under the skin made explicit in the work of Shirley Jackson, but equally as deadly.

Clingerman’s new anthology, The Clingerman Files, includes all of her originally published stories; The Day of the Green Velvet Cloak, Mr. Sakrison’s Halt, Wild Wood, The Little Witch of Elm Street and many other favourites. Also included are previously unpublished works; Top Hand, Tribal Customs, The Birthday Party, Fathers of Daughters and many more soon to be favourites. The key to her stories is that they appear simple and straightforward, but each takes a twist or turn that, even when you’re tempted to guess where they’re heading, they take you there in a way you would never have bargained on.

Other writers of the period tried to make big splashes. Clingerman, it seems, prided herself in concealing her effects within her masterfully constructed sentences. They barely make a ripple on the surface; all their power and drive lurk deep down below. So many of her stories are alive with the underpinning notion that the cosmological vistas we spy at the end ends of telescopes and various other means of measurement belong to the very same universe under our feet. We’re not apart from the universe, we’re a part of it. Nearly every story here is alive with that sensibility, in the truest sense of that word. In every sentence there is a note (a gentle one, but insistent) of silent rebellion, a surreptitious snarl, entreating you to see that not the everyday, but an undiscovered marvel.

May these eloquent rebellions be undiscovered no longer.

The son of a Civil War veteran, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific writer for the early pulp magazines. Famous the world over as the creator of Tarzan – and in SF circles for his Martian tales featuring John Carter – Burroughs is a household name. But John Carter wasn’t the only Earthman to champion another world. This omnibus collects PIRATES OF VENUS, LOST ON VENUS and CARSON OF VENUS – the first three of Burroughs’ classic pulp tales of Carson Napier on the waterworld of Amtor – better known to us as Venus.

PIRATES OF VENUS: The shimmering, cloud-covered planet of Venus conceals a wondrous secret: the strikingly beautiful yet deadly world of Amtor. In Amtor, cities of immortal beings flourish in giant trees reaching thousands of feet into the sky; ferocious beasts stalk the wilderness below; rare flashes of sunlight precipitate devastating storms; and the inhabitants believe their world is saucer-shaped with a fiery center and icy rim. Stranded on Amtor after his spaceship crashes, astronaut Carson Napier is swept into a world where revolution is ripe, the love of a princess comes at a dear price, and death can come as easily from the blade of a sword as from the ray of a futuristic gun.

LOST ON VENUS: Napier’s adventures continue in this pulse-pounding sequel to PIRATES OF VENUS. Here the intrepid and wry explorer takes on a savage world in order to rescue the princess from her sworn enemies. Napier’s epic quest for Duare takes him through the streets of the City of the Dead, into the terrifying Room of the Seven Doors, and face to face with fantastic and perilous creatures. LOST ON VENUS brims with the action, suspense and wit unique to the Master of Adventure.

CARSON OF VENUS: Carson Napier, first Earthman to reach Venus, had to keep alert every instant of his stay on that world of mist and mystery. For its lands were unmapped, its inhabitants many, varied and strange, and he had taken an obligation to restore a native princess to her lost homeland. On terrible oceans where dreaded sea-monsters dwelled, in deep forests where terror haunted every branch, and behind the walls of eerie cities where power-mad chieftains plotted uncanny schemes, CARSON OF VENUS is fast-paced science fiction adventure.

“LAMB HOUSE is in Rye, an ancient town of East Sussex, England. It is very much a real place, even a famous one, yet The Haunting of Lamb House is as elusive to review as it must have been to write. It is safe to say that no one but Joan Aiken could have written it, not only because she was born in Rye and has the town in her bones as it were, but also because she has the power — shown in her other books — of evoking strange, often eerie events of the past and making other times, places and people vividly alive. This book goes further: She has taken the real history of Lamb House and interwoven happenings that are purely imaginary, working so skillfully that even those who have lived there can hardly tell which is which!”

So wrote novelist Rumer Godden, who also lived in Lamb House. She went on:

“For those who do not sense such things, The Haunting of Lamb House is a most skillful and intriguing interweaving of fact and fiction; to those who do, it is a memorable evocation. In either case it is a little masterpiece.”

Lamb House in Joan Aiken’s birth town of Rye in Sussex is said to be haunted. This is her story of what might have happened to cause the haunting: using the imagined diary of an earlier Mayor of Rye, Toby Lamb, whose father built the handsome Georgian house, and later episodes that might have occurred during the occupancy of two of its famous literary tenants – Henry James and E.F. Benson.

Joan Aiken was born in another haunted house owned by her father Conrad Aiken: Jeake’s House, just around the corner in Mermaid Street, Rye, which she also wrote about in Return to Harken House.

“Joan Aiken has written a clever book, kindling a whole world of feeling out of small macabre details, presenting to the senses a series of apprehensions of reality which seem to touch a completeness beyond themselves. An impressive achievement; I shivered as I admired” Robert Nye, The Guardian

“Joan Aiken’s artful web of truth and fancy is divided into three histories of haunting – the first employs Aiken’s considerable skill in a vivid evocative rendering of the old town of Rye when the house was built…followed by the twenty years of Henry James’ residence. The end is worth waiting for…where E.F.Benson encounters hideous apparitions and even an exorcism in the last enthralling twenty pages” Miranda Seymour, T.L.S.

“Aiken has conjured up a deliciously scary ghost story…her mastery of style serves her well in the creation of three separate voices. Those familiar with Henry James’s writing especially The Turn of The Screwwill derive special enjoyment from this novel, but there are shivers enough for any reader willing to acknowledge the possibility of ghosts and the reality of evil” U.S. Library Journal

“In three interlocking ghost stories this veteran British novelist places a fictional haunting within the history of a real house, and displays a masterly way with several contrasting narrative styles, sympathetically evoking some ghostly presences…the wayward spirit of the house and the growing number of literary presences which gradually take possession” Publisher’s Weekly