Fellside by M.R. Carey

Fellside is another terrifying, yet gripping story by M.R. Carey, the author of The Girl With All The Gifts. 

Jess Moulson goes on a hunger strike shortly before entering a maximum security prison, Fellside. 

Though Jess nearly dies, a young boy gives her a reason to live. Alex, the ghost of the boy whom everyone believes she killed, asks her to do the one thing she cannot refuse.

Fellside is a ghost story that reads like a riveting psychological thriller and suspenseful mystery.

Jess's relationship with Alex is complicated. She wants to protect him from everything but he is also powerful. He saved her when a nurse punctured her artery instead of her vein:

"He'd brought her back from the abyss, from the mouth of the grave. She owed him everything and he owed her nothing except arguably a life for a life and a tooth for a tooth."

  
Alex knows, however, that the fire Jess started while she was high hadn't killed him. 

The fire she set hadn't killed him because he was already dead. So who hurt him and how did he die?  

As a favor to Alex who brought her back from the blackness, Jess agrees to appeal her case and investigate what truly happened to him. 

The Small Hand by Susan Hill

On his way back from a client on the coast, Andrew Snow, a rare book dealer, cuts through the Downs and has an odd experience. After leaving the main road, he gets lost and finds himself inexplicably stopping at a dilapidated mansion. On The White House grounds, he feels the presence of a small hand gripping his own but yet there's no visible child. Is this a ghost or is he going mad like his brother, Hugo? Why do the gardens and pool fascinate him? Why does it all seem so achingly familiar?

Susan Hill (The Woman in Black) does a masterful job of creating tension and suspense in the marvelous ghost story. Hill is particularly good and creating psychological portraits that ring true. Infused with the supernatural, this novelette also revels how skillfully we deceive ourselves as adults. Grown-ups falsely believe their past is past--that their childhood fears and offenses are long buried. 

The Winter People by Jennifer MacMahon

The Winter People opens with the makings of a wonderful ghost story: strange disappearances, missing diary pages, a rock formation in the shape of a hand, and a local legend about a woman that walks at night.

The novel loses some of its punch, however, by giving us too many different points of view. Sara/Martin is the most interesting thread, as they are closest to the main narrative events.

Having lost many children, Sara makes a Faustian bargain to bring back one of the dead. She uses her Aunt's instructions to bring her child back from the dead. Sleepers, however, can only walk the earth for seven days unless they spill blood.

Three contemporary stories muddy the waters, however, making the plot somewhat difficult to follow. A teenage girl and younger sister, the new inhabitants of the house, find strange objects (two driver's licenses and a gun) in Sara's house. These items lead them to a deranged woman who demands the return of missing diary pages--something they know nothing about. 

Next, a grieving woman becomes involved in the hunt for missing diary pages when she learns her deceased husband had also visited Sara and Martin's house. The four of them, the teenage girl, the little girl, the deranged woman and grieving woman decide to look for the "portal" in the Devil's hand.

MacMahon crafts beautiful prose and an intriguing scenario. While the novel is still enjoyable, a tighter plot would have made it even better. 

 *I received a free advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Imagine a ruined house, an inheritance, a mysterious set of feral twins, a topiary garden, a murder, a ghost--these are just some of the Gothic elements that permeate The Thirteenth Tale.

 

Vida Winter, a successful novelist, contacts the bookish narrator, Margaret Lea, because she has one more tale to tell--the titular 13th tale. For years she has created falsehoods rather than reveal her past. She tell Margaret Lea she intends to tell the truth, at last, before the "wolf" catches her.

The Thirteenth Tale is a Gothic novel that explores how secrets and dark obsessions can destroy a family. More than that, however, it playfully looks at the slippery notion of self-hood--the small and cataclysmic changes that affect us and shake our identity.

If the novel is about abandonment--there's more than one abandoned child; it is, joyfully, also about reclaiming your family and your place in the world. 

Fans of this novel might enjoy seeing BBC a mini-series adaptation starring Olivia Holman and Lynn Redgrave. Setterfield's latest novel is Bellman and Black: a Ghost Story.