The Librarian’s Cellar: Slade House

Slade House

 

At first you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t.

 

Every nine years a guest is summoned to Slade House, behind the small black iron door, with no handle and no key – and every nine years, that guest narrates their experience as they enter into the strange and bewitching world of a house that isn’t really there, or is it? Where shape and time shift, and no-one is who they seem to be. Or are they?

I highly recommend Slade House as a quick and entertaining read, filled with a delicious mix of horror, suspense, a little of the science bit and some good old-fashioned ghostly goings on in a creepy mansion where twins, Jonah and Norah Grayer, ravenous for immortality at any cost, dwell in the twilight …

“…in a small space that’s immune to time, so a candle’ll never burn down in it, or a body won’t age in it.

A delightful novel from the author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, this is the first book by David Mitchell that I have read, but it won’t be the last!

 

 

The Librarian’s Cellar: The Grownup

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn, is a story about a young woman, making a living faking it as a cut-price psychic – with some illegal soft-core sex work on the side – making a decent wage by telling people what they want to hear, until that is, she meets Susan Burke, who lives in a Victorian house, Carterbrook Manor, with her husband, son and stepson, Miles…

If you like a good chiller with a contemporary punch, you will enjoy The Grownup. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story in 2015,  it is a very short read indeed. Language and pace move along with skill, precision and through a narrative of twisting corners and reveals that put to good use the vital ingredients of a psychological chiller – creepy Victorian house, sassy female protagonist, and a very strange kid!!