The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola

First Line: Shrieking split the leaden sky and Audrey looked up to see a host of birds, their wings ink-black against the grey.

It is 1857, and the Highland Clearances have left the Isle of Skye devastated, its remaining people mired in poverty. It is here that young Audrey Hart has come to help collect the folk and fairy tales of the people and communities.

When Audrey discovers the body of a young girl washed up on the beach, the crofters tell her that it's only a few weeks since another girl disappeared. The locals believe that the girls are victims of restless dead spirits that take the form of birds.

But Audrey becomes convinced that the girls' disappearances have nothing to do with the supernatural, and as she sets out to prove her theory, she finds her own life in danger.

The Isle of Skye, reeling from the Clearances, is the perfect atmospheric setting for Anna Mazzola's Gothic suspense novel, The Story Keeper. Newly arrived from London, young Audrey Hart is eager to begin collecting folk and fairy tales. But the locals are distrustful. To them, Audrey represents the people who burned so many of them out of their homes, the people who stole friends and family and sold them as slaves in America, the people who have forbidden them to speak their own language and share their own stories. It doesn't even really help if Audrey tells them that her mother was a Scot who often visited Skye to collect stories. Too much pain, so many losses, have colored the way these people feel-- and who can blame them?

The Story Keeper comes close to being the typical Gothic suspense novel (creepy house, strange behavior from the locals, bad weather, etc.), but Mazzola weaves so much of the life of the people into her story that it rises above the genre. And Audrey isn't the typical naïve heroine. She has an a-ha moment that should make all readers stop and think when she's "...wondering how many crimes had been concealed by claims of the mystical." Once she has that thought, The Story Keeper transforms from a typical Gothic novel to a murder mystery.

I really enjoyed The Story Keeper for the descriptions of the Isle of Skye, for the weaving of social history into the narrative, for the folk and fairy tales, and for its murder mystery (even though it wasn't very difficult to deduce the villains). I'll definitely be on the lookout for more of Mazzola's writing.

The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola

ISBN: 9781472234780

Tinder Press © 2018

Hardcover, 352 pages

Gothic Suspense, Standalone

Rating: A

Source: Purchased from Amazon UK.


 

A House of Ghosts by W.C. Ryan

First Line: The sea was black as ink and the small fishing boat, travelling under a loose sail, moved slowly across its glass-flat calm.

It's the winter of 1917, and so many people who have lost loved ones in the brutal fighting of World War I are finding it difficult to let go. Spiritualism and séances abound. Armaments industrialist Lord Highmount has invited a group of people to Blackwater Abbey, his country house on an island off the coast of Devon. The purpose of the gathering is an attempt to contact his two sons, both of whom died at the front.

Two of the guests have been sent by the British intelligence service. One, Kate Cartwright, is a friend of the family who lost her brother at the Somme and who has her own special gift in terms of the spiritual. The other is Captain Donovan, who recently returned from Europe. Top secret plans for weapons developed by Highmount's company have turned up in Berlin, and British intelligence believes that enemy spies will be in attendance at Blackwater Abbey. 

As the guests arrive, it is clear that they all have things they'd rather keep hidden. When a storm descends, they are all trapped on the island, and then someone dies...

As a teenager, I loved reading Gothic suspense novels. I couldn't get enough of the creepy old houses, atmospheric settings, and (often) searches for treasure. W.C. Ryan's A House of Ghosts fits into the Gothic suspense genre beautifully. Blackwater Abbey is hundreds of years old, the site of an ancient monastery, and it is absolutely filled with secret doors, rooms, and passageways. I wish the place were real so I could wander around it myself. The atmosphere was tense, and when the storm descended, it added to the frayed nerves of the people in the house: "It seemed as though the house and the wind were having a conversation" (and it wasn't a good one).

The two main characters, Kate Cartwright and Captain Donovan, were strong, intelligent people who were quick thinkers in dangerous situations-- even when sparks flew between them. Kate, like many of the women in her family, could see ghosts. Just see them, not talk with them, and she also had the FitzAubrey glass, an ancient mirror that women in her family could use to glimpse the future.

One of the elements of A House of Ghosts that really ratcheted up the suspense was the presence of ghosts. Around the pier on the island, the spirits of the drowned collected. In Blackwater Abbey, home of a man who made his fortune in munitions, dead soldiers kept gathering-- and the house already contained the spirits of many of its former residents. Yes, the ghosts were a strong force in the book, and they led me to believe that the ending was going to be explosive... but it wasn't. They were used and then discarded, almost as though the author didn't want his novel dismissed as a mere lightweight ghost story.

However, even though I found the ending to be a slight letdown, I still really enjoyed A House of Ghosts. Ryan left a suggestion at the end that may mean there will be at least one more book featuring Cartwright and Donovan, and I hope there is.

A House of Ghosts by W.C. Ryan

eISBN: 9781948924726

Arcade Crimewise © 2019

eBook, 384 pages

Gothic Suspense, Standalone

Rating: A

Source: Purchased from Amazon.


 

The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton

First Line: We came to Birchwood Manor because Edward said that it was haunted.

In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists plans to spend a month being inspired by the countryside around Birchwood Manor, a country home owned by the group's leader, Edward Radcliffe. Things begin well, but before their stay is over, one woman is dead, another is missing, an heirloom has disappeared, and Radcliffe's life is in tatters.

More than one hundred fifty years later, Elodie Winslow, a young London archivist, finds a leather satchel containing a Victorian photograph of a beautiful woman and an artist's sketchbook containing the drawings of a house she believed belonged only in a fairy tale. Finding herself completely under the spell of both woman and house, Elodie knows she must try solving this mystery of who and where.

During the long span of its life, Birchwood Manor has been many things, including a school for young ladies, but when Birdie Bell begins the tale of her residency in the Tudor manor house and tells us, "It was long ago; it was yesterday," that one Dickensian line put me firmly in Kate Morton's spell-weaving hands.

By the time I'd finished The Clockmaker's Daughter, I'd added Birchwood Manor to my list of favorite literary houses. Yes, over the centuries it has been many things to many people, but above all, it has been a place of refuge, a place of safety. In the dead of night, a light has been known to shine from an attic dormer, signaling sanctuary to those who need it. I fell in love with Birchwood Manor, every stone, every timber, every flower in its gardens, all the way down to its jetty on the River Thames.

Morton's novel is a slow-moving story told in multiple voices. I'm not complaining about the pace because this is the type of story that must build gradually. Once or twice while reading I did wonder if quite so many voices were needed to advance the plot, but for the most part, I found each character enjoyable-- especially young schoolgirl Ada Lovegrove and Birdie Bell herself.

In many ways, reading The Clockmaker's Daughter is like putting together a large, complicated jigsaw puzzle. The final image is so compelling that you just can't stop reading. As each clue to the mystery is uncovered, it's as though you've found a lost puzzle piece under the box lid or spied one under the sofa cushion and you can't wait to fit it into its proper place.

I have to admit that I didn't really find any great surprises in the plot of this novel, but I didn't care. Being a master storyteller isn't always about coming up with something brand-new. Sometimes it's just about being able to tell a story that fires the reader's imagination so that the person turning the pages can see themselves in each scene of the book and feel the emotions each character feels. If this is the type of book you're in the mood for, there's only one thing to do: pick up a copy of Kate Morton's The Clockmaker's Daughter and meet the people of Birchwood Manor.

The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton

eISBN: 9781451649437

Atria Books © 2018

eBook, 512 pages

Gothic Suspense, Standalone

Rating: A

Source: Net Galley

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

First Line: The new doctor took her by surprise.

Elsie thought she had it made when she married Rupert Bainbridge. Not only did she truly love the handsome heir, she was looking forward to something she never thought she would have: a life of luxury in a stately home. Now Rupert is dead, and Elsie is a pregnant young widow going to live at the Bainbridge country estate until her period of mourning is over.

What she finds at The Bridge is not what she expected. The country house is in dire need of cleaning and repair, the servants resent her presence, the local villagers are actively hostile, and she's stuck with the company of Rupert's rather insipid cousin, Sarah. But as she and Sarah explore the moldering old house, Elsie finds a locked door-- and when she opens it her life will never be the same, for one of the things she finds is a painted wooden figure-- a silent companion-- that looks uncannily like Elsie herself. Elsie scoffs at the servants, who are terrified of the thing... until she notices the figure's eyes following her.

I've always enjoyed a well-told ghost story. The problem is finding one that rivets my attention to the turning of each page. I'm happy to say that I found a Victorian ghost story that suits me right down to the ground: Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions.

I found the beginning of the book to be a bit slow moving until the locked room was opened and a diary was found and read. Then there were two timelines to follow, and I have to admit that I wish Anne Bainbridge's diary written in 1635 was a lot longer because that story fascinated me with its focus on a visit to The Bridge by King Charles I and his queen, Henrietta Maria.

The second timeline is Elsie's in 1865, and both give a marvelous sense of time and place. One of the things I really enjoyed was how my perceptions of each character changed as I read further and further into the story. Even Elsie's seldom-seen brother Jolyon (a medieval version of "Julian") isn't just a foil for showing readers women's place in society and business during the Victorian era.

I know that those two-hundred-year-old wooden figures are supposed to be the scariest things in The Silent Companions, but they aren't what creeped me out. No, that honor goes to Purcell's descriptions of the house, its gardens, and the village. The village was so mired in poverty, superstition, and hostility, the house and gardens with dirt, neglect, and resentment that the menace was palpable. As I read, I felt that eyes in the back of my head were not enough; no, I needed a team of Navy SEALs surrounding me at all times.

If you're in the mood for a good ghost story, I highly recommend The Silent Companions. I still shiver when I think of revisiting that ancient country house, The Bridge. 

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

eISBN: 9781524705282

Penguin Books © 2018

eBook, 315 pages

Gothic Suspense, Standalone

Rating: A+

Source: Net Galley