Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into a rambling Victorian estate called Baneberry Hall. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a memoir called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon.
Now, Maggie has inherited Baneberry Hall after her father's death. She was too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she doesn't believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don't exist.
But when she returns to Baneberry Hall to prepare it for sale, her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the pages of her father's book lurk in the shadows, and locals aren't thrilled that their small town has been made infamous. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself - a place that hints of dark deeds and unexplained happenings.
As the days pass, Maggie begins to believe that what her father wrote was more fact than fiction. That, either way, someone - or some thing - doesn't want her here. And that she might be in danger all over again . . .
'DADDY, YOU NEED TO CHEK FOR GHOSTS'. I paused in the doorway of my daughter's bedroom, startled in the way all parents get when their child says something truly confounding. PROLOGUE, JULY 1
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(@HodderBooks, 17 September 2020, ebook, 402 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I read a lot of horror and a lot of thrillers. This book is an interesting combination of both. I enjoyed the chapters set in the past, extracts from the notorious book written by Maggie's father. This added a nice contrast to the chapters set in the present and gradually brought both storylines together. There are twists and turns in the book, as expected and I never quite knew what to expect.