The Seance — John Harwood

“An electrifying Victorian ghost story” from the International Horror Guild Award-winning author of The Asylum (The Seattle Times).
 
“Sell the Hall unseen; burn it to the ground and plow the earth with salt, if you will; but never live there . . .” Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for Constance's sister, the child she lost. Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance takes her to a séance: perhaps she will find comfort from beyond the grave. But the meeting has tragic consequences. Constance is left alone, her only legacy a mysterious bequest that will blight her life.
 
So begins The Séance, John Harwood's brilliant second novel, a gripping, dark mystery set in late-Victorian England. It is a world of apparitions, of disappearances and unnatural phenomena, of betrayal and blackmail and black-hearted villains -- and murder. For Constance's bequest comes in two parts: a house and a mystery. Years before, a family disappeared at Wraxford Hall, a decaying mansion in the English countryside with a sinister reputation. Now the Hall belongs to Constance. And she must descend into the darkness at the heart of the Wraxford Mystery to find the truth, even at the cost of her life.
 
“Harwood has written a true gothic, and invented a supremely creepy house to stage it in.” -- Salon
 
“Wilkie Collins would be proud: this is a Victorian world of mesmerism and spirits, vapours and delirium, doomed inheritances, shivery maids and spooky visitations in the night.” -- Times (UK)
 
“Perfect fare for a standard dark and stormy night.”