Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he also travelled extensively and converted to Catholicism. In 1939 Waugh was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, experiences which informed his Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-61). His most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited (1945), was written while on leave from the army. Waugh died in 1966.

Evelyn Waugh

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E F Benson

A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY 
WH Auden, Nancy Mitford and Noel Coward were among his fans... But have you discovered E. F. Benson yet? 
 
In a Holbein portrait above the grand old fireplace, Francis Vail, second baronet, brandishes a beautiful golden goblet, encrusted with pearls, rubies and emeralds. But this treasure, the Luck of the Vails, has since brought the family nothing but ruin and death. 
 
On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Harry Vail discovers the Luck hidden in the attic of his ancestral home, the family curse is reawoken, and a tale of madness, avarice and murder unfolds. 
 
Murder mystery... Ghost story... Whodunnit. This is a classic detective story from the author of Mapp and Lucia. Crime fiction at its best.

The Luck of the Vails

Daisy Johnson

*Now a major film SEPTEMBER SAYS* 
 
The electrifying novel from the Booker shortlisted author of Everything Under. 
 
'A short sharp explosion of a gothic thriller' Observer 
 
Something unspeakable has happened to sisters July and September. 
 
Desperate for a fresh start, they move across the country to an old family house that has a troubled life of its own. Noises come from behind the walls. Lights flicker of their own accord. Sleep feels impossible, dreams are endless. 
 
In their new, unsettling surroundings, July finds that the fierce bond she's always had with September - forged with a blood promise when they were children - is beginning to change in ways she cannot understand.

Sisters

Ruth Ware

THEIR DREAM HOUSE WILL BECOME HER WORST NIGHTMARE 
 
'Ruth Ware just gets better and better’ Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of The Family Upstairs 
 
‘The queen of creepy crime’ Metro 
 
When Rowan comes across the advert, it seems too good to be true: a live-in nanny position, with an extremely generous salary. 
 
What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare – one that will end with her in a cell awaiting trial for murder. 
 
She knows she's made mistakes. 
But she's not guilty – at least not of murder. 
Which means someone else is... 
 
THE TURN OF THE KEY IS: 
 
‘Eerie and Tense’ Prima 
 
‘Dark and dramatic’ AJ Finn, bestselling author of The Woman in the Window 
 
‘Deliciously dark and spooky’ Sunday Mirror 
 
‘Powerfully atmospheric, unguessably twisty’ Louise Candlish, bestselling author of Our House

The Turn of the Key

Sadie Jones

A sinister tale of haunting beauty, from The Outcast author Sadie Jones. 
 
It is the eve of Emerald Torrington’s twentieth birthday and the family has assembled at Sterne, the once grand, now crumbling, family seat. The cake is iced, the wine decanted, the house gleams invitingly. 
 
But before the first dish can be served, a mysterious group of strangers arrives at the door. Victims of a local train accident they are seeking shelter at the house. 
 
The Torringtons welcome them in but there is something unsettling about the group and, as night falls and a storm rages outside, the family begins to wonder if something more malevolent than stranded travellers is in their home...

The Uninvited Guests

Susan Hill

Rebecca was Daphne du Maurier's most famous and best-loved novel. 
 
But what happened next? 
 
Married to the sophisticated, wordly-wise Maxim, the second Mrs de Winter's life should be happy and fulfilled. But the vengeful ghost of Rebecca, Maxim's first wife, continues to cast its long shadow over them. Back in England after an absence of over ten years, it seems as if happiness will at last be theirs. 
 
But the de Winters still have to reckon with two hate-consumed figures they once knew - both of whom have very long memories...

Mrs de Winter

Gothic Fiction

John Harwood

London, 1881. Constance Langton lives in a gloomy home with a distant father and a grief-stricken mother; seeking refuge and comfort, she secretly attends a séance which has tragic consequences. Left alone, her only legacy is a mysterious inheritance that will blight her life and take her deep into a world of apparitions, betrayal and blackmail, black-hearted villains - and murder.

The Seance

Lawrence Osborne

SOON TO BE A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM, STARRING COLIN FARELL AND TILDA SWINTON 
 
‘I waited patiently for the next hand to be played out, and I had a feeling it was going to be a Natural, a perfect nine.’ 
 
His name is Lord Doyle. 
 
His plan: to gamble away his last days in the dark and decadent casino halls of Macau. 
 
His game: baccarat punto blanco -- 'that slutty dirty queen of casino card games.' 
 
Though Doyle is not a Lord at all. He is a fake; a corrupt lawyer who has spent a career siphoning money from rich clients. And now he is on the run, determined to send the money – and himself – up in smoke. 
 
So begins a beguiling, elliptical velvet rope of a plot: a sharp suit, yellow kid gloves, another naughty lemonade and an endless loop of small wins and losses. When Lady Luck arrives in the form of Dao-Ming, a beautiful yet enigmatic lost soul, so begins a spectacular and unnatural winning streak in which millions come Doyle’s way. But in these shadowy dens of risk and compulsion, in a land governed by superstition, Doyle knows that when the bets are high, the stakes are even greater. 
 
The Ballad of a Small Player is a sleek, dark-hearted masterpiece: a ghost story set in the land of the living, and a decadent morality tale of a Faustian pact made, not with the devil, but with fortune’s fickle hand.

The Ballad of a Small Player

Koethi Zan

‘As gripping as Gone Girl’ Elle 
 
NEVER GO OUT ALONE AFTER DARK 
 
For years, Sarah and Jennifer kept the Never List: a list of things to be avoided at all costs. 
 
NEVER GET IN THE CAR 
 
But one night, they broke their own rules – with horrifying consequences. 
 
NEVER TAKE RISKS 
 
Sarah has spent ten years trying to forget her terrifying ordeal. But it seems the killer has not forgotten her… 
 
NEVER TRUST ANYONE

The Never List

Chuck Palahniuk

Diary takes the form of a 'coma diary' kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in hospital after a suicide attempt. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at art school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she's been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid. Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in houses he's refurbished and scrawling vile messages all over the walls. Angry homeowners are suing, and Misty's dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. The canvases are taken away by her mother-in-law and her doctor, who seem to have a plan for Misty - and for all those annoying tourists...

Diary

Viola Hatherley was a writer of ghost stories in the 1890s whose work lies forgotten until her great-grandson, as a young boy in Mawson, Australia, learns how to open the secret drawer in his mother's room. There he finds a manuscript, and from the moment his mother catches him in the act, Gerard Freeman's life is irrevocably changed. What is the invisible, ever-present threat from which his mother strives so obsessively to protect him? And why should stories written a century ago entwine themselves ever more closely around events in his own life? 
 
Gerard's quest to unveil the mystery that shrouds his family, and his life, will lead him from Mawson to London, to a long-abandoned house and the terror of a ghost story come alive.

The Ghost Writer

Justin Evans

George Davies has a problem: he can't bring himself to hold his newborn son. Desperate to save his dwindling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, George visits a therapist and begins to delve into the childhood memories that may be the root of his issues. Ten-year-old George, in the wake of his father's harrowing and unexpected death, is experiencing ominous visions - some friendly, others outright terrifying. Unable to control those visions, George starts to display erratic behaviour and eventually becomes violent. When a mysterious murder is ultimately revealed, the stakes are suddenly much higher for him and his family. Are the visions just the product of a grief-stricken child's overactive imagination? Symptoms of mental illness? Or is ten-year-old George possessed by a darker, more malevolent force?

A Good and Happy Child

A terrifying ghost story by the bestselling author of The Woman in Black. 
 
The remoter parts of the English Fens are unruly, deserted and damp, even in the height of summer. In Iyot Lock stands a large, decaying house, belonging to Leonora and Edward's Aunt Kestrel. The pair are cousins, who were both sent to their aunt's creepy house for the summer when they were children. 
 
At the time, Leonora was angry and upset when she received the wrong dolly for her birthday. 
 
At the time, Edward told himself that the noises he heard around the house were in his head. 
 
But now, 40 years later, the terrifying consequences of what happened to Leonora's birthday doll are just beginning to surface...

Dolly

A Ghost Story

Jo Nesbo

A twisted spin on the classic coming-of-age horror story from the Sunday Times No.1 bestselling author Jo Nesbo 
 
WHEN THE VOICES CALL, DON'T ANSWER... 
 
In the wake of his parents' tragic deaths fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote town of Ballantyne. 
 
Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. 
 
No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the woods. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices start . . . 
 
When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne. 
 
Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.

The Night House

'Heartstoppingly chilling' Daily Express 
 
Read the truly terrifying classic English ghost story behind the play. 
 
Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House. The house stands at the end of a causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose. 
 
'No one chills the heart like Susan Hill' Daily Telegraph 
 
**If you love The Woman in Black, try The Various Haunts of Men, the first book in Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler series**

The Woman in Black

Carl Streator is a reporter investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for a soft-news feature. After responding to several calls with paramedics, he notices that all the dead children were read the same poem from the same library book the night before they died. It's a 'culling song' - an ancient African spell for euthanizing sick or old people. Researching it, he meets a woman who killed her own child with it accidentally. He himself accidentally killed his own wife and child with the same poem twenty years earlier. Together, the man and the woman must find and destroy all copies of this book, and try not to kill every rude sonofabitch that gets in their way. Lullaby is a comedy/drama/tragedy. In that order. It may also be Chuck Palahniuk's best book yet.

Lullaby

Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter. They are told by the people who have all answered an ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.

Haunted

Susan Stokes-Chapman

A remote village, a mysterious death, a secret cult – a gripping gothic mystery from the author of number one bestseller Pandora 
 
‘A gripping, beautifully executed historical thriller, full of magic and mythology’ Rosie Andrews 
 
After a grave mistake, Henry Talbot has been forced to take a position as village doctor in remote Wales where he can't speak the language and belief in myth and magic is rife. When Henry discovers his predecessor died in mysterious circumstances, and starts to notice a cryptic symbol appearing in odd places, he sets out to find answers. 
 
The lady of the manor, Linette Tresilian, is vexingly unhelpful at first. She seems to know little about the shelves of occult books Henry notices in her family’s library. But Linette has suspicions of her own about what’s happened in the village and, together, their investigations will bind their destinies in ways neither thought possible. 
 
‘An alluring, immersive Gothic mystery’ Jennifer Saint 
 
'A haunting, transporting mystery…kept me completely enthralled' Elodie Harper 
 
‘I was gripped… the story was so dark and clever’ Stacey Thomas 
 
 
Readers love The Shadow Key 
 
'Deliciously dark, atmospheric, and brimful of folklore, magic and myth, this Gothic thriller held me spellbound from start to finish' 
 
'Devoured this book over two days' 
 
'What begins as a murder mystery turns into a gothic classic which is not to be missed. Highly recommend' 
 
'I loved the feel of this book and I was hooked from the first chapter' 
 
'A breathtaking gothic fiction with an unforgettable finale, Stokes-Chapman is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors'

The Shadow Key

Jack Wolf

The year is 1750. 
 
Meet Tristan Hart, precociously talented student of medicine. 
 
His obsession is the nature of pain and preventing. He is on a quest to cut through superstition with the brilliant blade of science. 
 
Meet Tristan Hart, madman and deviant. 
 
His obsession is the nature of pain, and causing it. He is on a quest to arouse the perfect scream and slay the daemon Raw Head who torments his days and nights. 
 
Troubled visionary, twisted genius, loving sadist. 
 
What is real and what imagined in Tristan Hart’s brutal, beautiful, complex world?

The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones

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