Chilling new novel is perfect reading for cold winter nights

The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements

‘One coin marks the first to go.

A second bodes the fall.

The third will seal a sinner’s fate.

The Devil take them all.’

Maybe you’ve heard tales about Scarcross Hall, the house on the old coffin path that winds from village to moor top. They say there’s something up here, something evil. Mercy Booth isn’t afraid. The moors and Scarcross are her home and lifeblood. But, beneath her certainty, small things are beginning to trouble her. Three ancient coins missing from her father’s study, the shadowy figure out by the gatepost, an unshakeable sense that someone is watching. When a stranger appears seeking work, Mercy reluctantly takes him in. As their stories entwine, this man will change everything.

Historical fiction author Katherine Clements returns with a chilling story that is sure to send shivers down your spine. She crafts a fantastic eerie atmosphere, bringing the moors vividly to life through each season of the year. It reminded me of Wideacre by Philippa Gregory in its evocation of the English landscape, somehow both enchanting and terrifying in its disparate and volatile moods.

The historical detail here is exemplary. The reader feels as though they are standing right beside the characters as they fight to save the lives of a mother sheep and her lamb during a difficult birth, or sitting in the warm fug of a kitchen in the flickering candlelight. Alongside the realistic detail there is a palpable sense of dread, the feeling of someone watching you even when there’s no one around, and a glimpse of impossible things out of the corner of your eye.

Clements does a fantastic job of slowly building up the tension. Items go missing, lambs are found mutilated, and footsteps can be heard inside locked rooms. There is something evil at the hall, but the question is whether the characters will realise the truth before it is too late?

The characters are vividly created. Mercy is a woman who has carefully constructed a cold exterior in order to protect her herself following a previous heartbreak. She has expected all her life that she will inherit Scarcross Hall, as her father’s only heir, and the hall and the land are the only things she allows herself to have any feeling for. She does not act as women of her age and class are supposed to be, and for that vicious rumours swirl about her. And these only intensify when Mercy allows a stranger into her home.

This is a fantastic book to settle down with on a cold winter’s night, a chilling gothic tale of ghosts, family and betrayal.

New books out this month include releases by Michelle Obama and Stephen Fry

The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to tales of murder. As a literature teacher specialising in the Gothic writer R.M. Holland, she teaches a short course on them every year. Then Clare’s life and work collide tragically when one of her colleagues is found dead, a line from an R.M. Holland story by her body. Not knowing who to trust, Clare confides her darkest suspicions about the case to her journal. Then one day she notices some other writing in the diary. Writing that isn’t hers…

I love anything Gothic and this new novel from bestselling author Elly Griffiths has been billed as Susan Hill meets Gone Girl, which sounds like the perfect combination.

Release date: 1^st November

House of Glass by Susan Fletcher

June 1914 and a young woman, Clara Waterfield, is summoned to a large stone house in Gloucestershire. Her task: to fill a greenhouse with exotic plants to create a private paradise for the owner of Shadowbrook. Yet, on arrival, Clara hears rumours: something is wrong with the house. Something – or someone – is walking through the corridors at night. In the height of summer, she finds herself drawn deeper into Shadowbrook’s dark interior, and into the secrets that haunt the house.

This seems to be the time of year for Gothic thrillers, and Fletcher’s new novel – said to be reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier – sounds like perfect reading for the cold, dark month of November.

Release date: 1^st November

Someone Like Me by M.R. Carey

Liz Kendall wouldn’t hurt a fly. Even when times get tough, she’s devoted to bringing up her kids in a loving home. But there’s another side to Liz, one that’s dark and malicious. She will do anything to get her way – no matter how extreme. And when her alter-ego takes control, the consequences are devastating.

This modern take on the Jekyll and Hyde tale from the author of The Girl with All the Gifts has been called ‘original, thrilling and powerful’ by the Guardian.

Release date: 8^th November

Heroes by Stephen Fry

There are heroes – and then there are Greek heroes. Few mere mortals have embarked on such bold and heart-stirring adventures, overcome myriad monstrous perils, or outwitted scheming vengeful gods, quite as stylishly and triumphantly as Greek heroes. Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece. See Atalanta outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples. And discover how Bellerophon captures the winged horse Pegasus.

In a companion to his bestselling Mythos, Stephen Fry retells classic Greek stories of mortals, monsters, quests and adventures with his trademark wit and enthusiasm.

Release date: 1^st November

Becoming by Michelle Obama

As First Lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women around the world. In her memoir, she invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her – from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her time spent at the world’s most famous address.

This highly anticipated memoir promises to be incredibly powerful and inspiring, offering a glimpse into the life of a woman who has continued to defy expectations.

Release date: 13^th November

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Daughters of the Lake by Wendy Webb

After the end of her marriage, Kate Granger has retreated to her parents’ home on Lake Superior to pull herself together – only to discover the body of a murdered woman washed into the shallows. Tucked in the folds of the woman’s curiously vintage gown is a dead infant. No one can identify the woman. Except for Kate. She’s seen her before, in her dreams. One hundred years ago, a love story ended in tragedy, its mysteries left unsolved. It’s time for the lake to give up its secrets.

Another Gothic novel on offer this November is this chilling mystery from award-winning author Wendy Webb, whose fans have taken to calling her ‘the queen of northern Gothic’.

Release date: 1^st November

Gentleman Jack by Angela Steidele

Anne Lister was a Yorkshire heiress, an intrepid world traveller and a proud lesbian during a time when it was difficult simply to be female. The first woman to climb Vignemale in the treacherous Pyrenees, she journeyed as far as Azerbaijan and refused to be constrained by the mores of Regency society. Anne’s erotic confessions and lively letters in her diaries tell the story of an extraordinary woman.

Celebrated author Angela Steidele breathes new life into a cult historical figure, using Anne’s own words to explore the history of gender and sexuality.

Release date: 1^st November

Land of the Living by Georgina Harding

Charlie’s experiences at the Battle of Kohima and the months he spent lost in the remote jungles of Assam during the Second World War are now history. Home and settled on a farm in Norfolk and newly married to Claire, he is one of the lucky survivors. Starting a family and working the land seem the best things a man can be doing. But a chasm exists between them. Memories flood Charlie’s mind. What should be said and what left unsaid?

This lyrical meditation on the impact of war promises to be both engrossing and poignant.

Release date: 1^st November

Fox 8 by George Saunders

Fox 8 has always been curious, and a bit of a daydreamer. And, by hiding outside houses at dusk and listening to children’s bedtime stories, he has learned to speak ‘Yuman’. The power of words is intoxicating for a fox with a poetic soul, but there is ‘danjur’ on the horizon: a new shopping mall is being built, cutting off his pack’s food supply. To save himself and his fellow foxes, Fox 8 will have to set out on a harrowing quest into the dark heart of suburbia.

From the author of the Man Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo comes an illustrated comic fable about human greed and nature.

Release date: 15^th November

What Would Cleopatra Do? by Elizabeth Foley

This new book shares the wisdom and advice passed down from Cleopatra, Queen Victoria, Dorothy Parker and 47 other heroines from past eras on how to handle an array of common problems women have encountered throughout history and still face today. From sticking up for yourself, improving body image, feeling like an imposter, and dealing with gossip, we can learn a lot by reading motivational stories of heroic women who took control of their own destinies.

Elizabeth Foley’s latest book – complete with whimsical illustrations by Bijou Karman – promises to be both funny and inspirational, and could very well be a great gift come Christmas.

Release date: 6^th November

New gothic novel will make you want to sleep with the lights on

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

‘What might commend so drab a creature to your sight, when overhead the low clouds split, and the upturned bowl of a silver moon pours milk out on the river? Nothing at all – nothing, that is, but this: these hours, these long minutes of this short day, must be the last when she knows nothing of Melmoth – when thunder is just thunder, and a shadow only darkness on the wall.’

Twenty years ago Helen Franklin did something she cannot forgive herself for, and she has spent every day since barricading herself against its memory. But her sheltered life is about to change. A strange manuscript has come into her possession. It is filled with testimonies from the darkest chapters of human history, which all record sightings of a tall, silent woman in black, with unblinking eyes and bleeding feet: Melmoth, the loneliest being in the world. Condemned to walk the Earth forever, she tries to beguile the guilty and lure them away for a lifetime of wandering alongside her. Helen can’t stop reading, or shake the feeling that someone is watching her. As her past finally catches up with her, she too must choose which path to take.

Sarah Perry has a lot to live up to after the success of her 2016 novel The Essex Serpent, longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and winner of Overall Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. In her latest novel, Perry has made a triumphant return to the gothic themes and claustrophobic atmosphere that made her previous book such a success.

Melmoth is a retelling of Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, written in 1820, in which the title character sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 years more time on Earth. In Perry’s updated version, Melmoth is a woman forced to witness the most terrible events in human history.

Melmoth is a dark, terrifying, clever exploration of guilt and the darkest parts of human nature, with a liberal sprinkling of gothic on top. The present day action is set in Prague and Perry does a spectacular job of bringing the beautiful city to life on the page, its cobbled streets and squares becoming the setting for events that may or may not have supernatural causes.

Compared to The Essex Serpent, in which Perry often spent pages and pages describing sky and marshland, Melmoth is pared-back in its description and weighs in at less than 300 pages. The atmosphere is nevertheless superb, and the somewhat antiquated language quickly becomes easy to read.

Though the novel asks profound questions about morality and guilt, and argues the importance of bearing witness to horrific events, its nods to gothic novels of the 19^th century – the mysterious manuscript, the frequent sightings of a dark figure out of the corner of your eye – ensures it is just as entertaining as it is profound.

We meet a variety of figures through the manuscript Helen obsessively pours over, each story having one thing in common: the appearance of a wraith-like woman at times of great misery, who reaches out and urges the miserable to take her hand and walk with her. Among others, there’s Josef Hoffman, a child living in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, and Sir David Ellerby, who meets a woman who tells him of the time she encountered Melmoth. But Helen is our protagonist, a woman with sins at her back she considers so unforgiveable that she has spent her life punishing herself for them. The reveal of what she did to cause such self-hatred is handled masterfully.

This is the perfect book to read at this time of year, when the evenings are drawing in and the temperature begins to drop. Several times I found myself jumping at small noises while reading it. Prepare to sleep with the lights on.

Many thanks to Serpent’s Tail for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.