Notes

As featured on the Radio 2 Book Club, this is a chilling ghost story to send shivers down your spine. Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at a crumbling estate, The Bridge. She thinks her only company is her husband's awkward cousin until discovering a locked room containing a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure who bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself.

Author Biography

Laura Purcell is a former bookseller, she lives in Colchester with her husband and pet guinea pigs. Her second novel for Bloomsbury, gothic chiller The Corset, will be published in 2018.laurapurcell.com@spookypurcell

Review

Writing in the tradition of country house ghost stories, Laura Purcell has created a book that is unnerving and compelling in equal measure. The Silent Companions is an atmospheric gothic tale which chills the blood * Sophia Tobin, author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Silversmith's Wife and The Widow's Confession *
Not since The Little Stranger has a book so entranced and haunted me. Compelling, bewitching and beautifully written. Read it if you dare * Anna Mazzola, author of The Unseeing *
If The Silent Companions lands on your night table, don't plan on leaving your bed anytime soon. Immersive, meticulous, and reminiscent of the masters of gothic fiction – not only a compulsively readable ghost story, but a skillful, loving ode to the entire genre * Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of Gotham *
Frighteningly atmospheric, genuinely haunting and psychologically astute, the horror of The Silent Companions lingers like truth in the darkest corners of the human mind * Helen Sedgwick, author of The Comet Seekers *
Compelling and claustrophobic. The pages all but turn by themselves * Essie Fox, author of The Last Days of Leda Grey *
Magnificently creepy … I really wished it were longer * Natasha Pulley, author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street *

Promotional

Inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson and Susan Hill and set in a crumbling country mansion, The Silent Companions is an unsettling gothic ghost story to send a shiver down the spine...

Review Quote

Frighteningly atmospheric , genuinely haunting and psychologically astute, the horror of The Silent Companions lingers like truth in the darkest corners of the human mind

Promotional "Headline"

Some doors are locked for a reason... Perfect for lovers of Susan Hill, Shirley Jackson and Bridget Collins

Feature

A brilliantly unnerving story - The Turn of the Screw meets The Little Stranger - with huge reading group potential

Details