The Widow of Pale Harbour
Hester Fox
MYSTERY, menace, romance… and more than a hint of
witchcraft. If gothic drama sends a shiver of anticipation down your
spine, then curl up on dark autumn nights with a gripping adventure threaded
through with intriguing literary allusions to groundbreaking American poet and
master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe.
Hester Fox, whose debut novel The Witch of Willow Hall
whipped up a storm of visual and verbal thrills, harnesses her work in museums
and historic houses to paint atmospheric backdrops of haunted houses and the
superstitious fears that still gripped 19th century New England
society long after the Salem witch trials.
Here, we travel to Maine in 1846 where Gabriel Stone is
desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s
death in childbirth, and moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the
remote coastal village of Pale Harbour. But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town.
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| GOTHIC DRAMA: Hester Fox |
Strange,
unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one
person can be responsible… Sophy Carver, a beautiful, reclusive and wealthy
widow who lives with her spinster maid and friend Helen in the eerie, isolated
Castle Carver and rarely ventures out.
Click here for Lancashire Post review
Click here for Lancashire Post review
There are whispers that Sophy almost certainly killed her
husband, and some mutter that she might even be a witch. Only one thing is
crystal clear… these bizarre happenings are the work of a twisted person
inspired by the wildly popular stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
But when the menace escalates into a series of horrific copycat
murders gleaned from Poe’s books, Gabriel finds himself falling under the spell
of outcast Sophy. Soon clues start to point to Sophy as the next victim and Gabriel
realises he must find answers before anyone else turns up dead... and Pale
Harbour suffers a fate worthy of Poe’s darkest tales.
Fox’s cast of charismatic characters – including the strong
and sensitive Gabriel and the fierce gothic heroine Sophy – are beautifully
portrayed in a story that tingles with danger, dark mystery, hints of the
supernatural, and a sultry, simmering romance. Ideal reading for fans of thrills and chills …
(HQ, paperback, £7.99)
The Beauty of the Wolf
Wray Delaney
FORGET the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast and
indulge your mind and senses in this stunning, feminist retelling by Wray Delaney,
pen name of award-winning children’s novelist Sally Gardner. The Beauty of the Wolf is another imaginative and
extraordinary novel from Delaney who first burst on to the scene as a writer of
adult novels with An Almond for a Parrot, a sizzling evocation of bawdy 18th
century novels like Fanny Hill and The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders.
Here, she casts her sharp, analytic eye over traditional
folklore and fairy tales in a riveting, highly spiced gothic adventure which
turns on its head the classic trope of the love between a beautiful young woman
and a beast of a man. Instead, we have a handsome young man cursed by his own
beauty, a woman deemed too monstrous to ever see the light of day, a menacing
sorceress who orchestrates the action, and all set against the seductive
backdrop of Elizabethan England rendered magical and mystical.
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| FEMINIST FANTASY: Wray Delaney |
Throw in plenty of references to Shakespeare, the real-life
‘lord’ of theatre revels, seductive elements of fantasy and the supernatural, a
fascinating exploration of gender roles, theories of the grotesque, and
questions about identity and beauty, and you have an exciting multi-genre
odyssey.
‘What some might call beauty, I find monstrous’
In the age of the Faerie Queene, Elizabeth I, a period of
ruffles and lace, velvets and satins, two newborn babies are cursed, one with
unimaginable beauty and the other, in its mirror image, a beast.
Click here for Lancashire Post review
Click here for Lancashire Post review
Ten years earlier, Lord Francis Rodermere had started to lay
waste to a forest. Furious, the sorceress who dwelt there scrawled a curse into
the bark of the first oak he fells… a faerie boy will be born to you whose
beauty will be your death. And when Lord Rodermere’s son, Beau, is born, all who
encounter him are struck by his great beauty. Meanwhile, many miles away in a
London alchemist’s cellar lives Randa – a creature so ugly that she can never
be seen. Lonely and hidden away, she longs for love but could anyone ever see
past her wings and beak and sharp talons? Is it possible that these two cursed creatures could be one
another’s salvation when all hope is lost? So begins a timeless tale of love,
tragedy and revenge…
The Beauty of the Wolf is a dazzling adventure from start to
finish… bawdy and yet beautiful, brimming with atmosphere, rich detail and
language, and a true mixed bag of both darkness and delights. Subtle, clever, fanciful and fiercely topical…
(HQ, paperback, £8.99)
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