Black Diamond — Rachel Ingalls

'Rachel Ingalls writes the kind of macabre, fantastic and haunting fiction called American Gothic... Its antecedents lie not in the hysterical 18th-century rebellion against reason, but in Jacobean tragedy, and in the complicated American relations with greed and Puritanism. Ingalls is one of the most brilliant practitioners of this Gothic since Poe... Black Diamond is a collection of five short stories, loosely linked by the theme of kinship. Ghoulish and gripping, they all begin in an atmosphere of unsophisticated tranquillity...' Amanda Craig, Independent 'The stories in Black Diamond ... wrap themselves insidiously around your curiosity, and draw you with them.' Sunday Times '[Ingalls'] vision evokes a world where psychosis and extreme violence stalk the American dream.' Time Out