The House of Whispers: A Novel

The House of Whispers: A Novel

A gothic tale set in a rambling house by the sea in which a maid cares for a mute old woman with a mysterious past, alongside her superstitious staff--from the author of The Silent Companions . A perfect spooky read! Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr. Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the disease in the caves beneath his new Cornish home. While he devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm. Forty years later, Hester arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralyzed and mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try to escape her past, but surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers her new home may be just as dangerous as her last. Laura Purcell's THE SHAPE OF DARKNESS is now out from Penguin! "Purcell paints a colorful portrait of her tale’s distant time and place and immerses the reader in an era when superstition was a tenacious thread in the social fabric that bound its people. Her tale of secret guilt and atoning for it through ancient customs will please fans of classic gothic melodrama." — Publisher's Weekly "Purcell excels at creating a spooky Gothic ambience... A dark and unsettling novel for lovers of  Rebecca  and  Jane Eyre ." — Kirkus "Purcell has a sure storytelling touch, a command of atmosphere and a keen eye for the telling details of social history. Oh, and she stores up some satisfying and suitably macabre final revelations." — The Guardian "A Victorian tale replete with laudanum, tuberculosis and possibly fairies... a clever, creepy read." — Sunday Express , Best New Thrillers "Brilliantly atmospheric and chilling... I raced through the pages hardly daring to find out what would happen next. Laura’s characters and the world they inhabit are compelling, unsettling and richly drawn. A fabulous tale!" — Ruth Hogan , author of The Keeper of Lost Things Praise for The Poison Thread "Uncanny... Satisfying."   — New York Times Book Review "[A] well-wrought chiller.”  —Wall Street Journal "Suspenseful... This smart and sophisticated historical thriller will appeal to fans of Sarah Waters’s  Fingersmith  and Margaret Atwood’s  Alias Grace ."  —Publishers Weekly  “A dark, gothic story… Purcell alternates character narratives to question motives, reality, and truth on a ‘bumpy’ ride full of violence and death.”  —Booklist "A fascinating mystery that’s rich in disquieting detail and at­mosphere.”  — BookPage Laura Purcell is the author of The Silent Companions and The Poison Thread . She worked in local government, the financial industry and a bookshop before becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Colchester, the oldest recorded town in England, with her husband and pet guinea pigs. Fascinated by the darker side of royal history, Laura has also written two historical fiction novels about the Hanoverian dynasty. Chapter 1   Love is fragile, my mother once said. It can break.   Maybe that is true, for some people. Not for me. My love is a grasping thing. A vine I cannot extricate myself from, pulling me down, down.   It is dragging me all the way to Cornwall, a county I have never set foot in before. Had I felt this chilling mist, perhaps I would have thought twice about answering the advertisement for a nurse and personal maid. But what choice do I truly have? I can never return to London. I must take the Mail coach somewhere, and it seems appropriate to flee to the end of the country, a place teetering on the edge of the map.   This is the bitterest winter I can recall. Too cold, even for snow. A world washed innocent and white might bring me some comfort, but no - this is the season of sleet and gunmetal skies. Everything is grey and cold. It is like purgatory, like my heart.   Frosted branches scrape their fingers across the roof as we dash along, our wheels skating on the road. Not even the sour breath and body odour of my fellow passengers serve to warm the air inside the coach. An elderly woman who smells of chamber pots squashes in close to me; on the other side, a brute beast of a man is spreading his legs. Officially, the Mail coach boasts room for but four interior passengers; however, this driver has squeezed in six of us. My arms are pinioned to my sides, numb. And we are the fortunate ones, riding inside instead of on the roof.   The windows rattle in their frames without intermission; the sleet persists in its sullen patter. Shadows creep over the faces of the passengers opposite me, spreading like a stain. Only their eyes remain bright, gleaming now and then