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    Fireside Gothic
    Fireside Gothic
    Fireside Gothic
    Audiobook6 hours

    Fireside Gothic

    Written by Andrew Taylor and Anna Bentinck

    Narrated by Leighton Pugh and Peter Noble

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    About this audiobook

    From the No.1 bestselling author of The American Boy and The Ashes of London comes a collection of three gothic novellas – Broken Voices, The Leper House and The Scratch – perfect for fans of The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley.

    Three dark tales to read by the fireside in the cold winter months

    BROKEN VOICES

    It’s Christmas before the Great War and two lonely schoolboys have been left in the care of an elderly teacher. There is little to do but listen to his eerie tales about the nearby Cathedral. The boys concoct a plan to discover if the stories are true. But curiosity can prove fatal.

    THE LEPER HOUSE

    One stormy night, a man’s car breaks down. The only light comes from a remote cottage by the sea. The mysterious woman who lives there begs him to leave, yet the next day he feels compelled to return. But, the woman is nowhere to be seen. And neither is the cottage.

    THE SCRATCH

    Clare and Gerald live in the Forest of Dean with their cat, Cannop. Gerald’s young nephew, back from service in Afghanistan, comes to stay, with a scratch that won’t heal. Jack and Cannop don't like each other. Clare and Jack like each other too much. The scratch begins to fester.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 3, 2016
    ISBN9780008179748
    Author

    Andrew Taylor

    Andrew Taylor is the author of a number of crime novels, including the ground-breaking Roth Trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed drama Fallen Angel, and the historical crime novels The Ashes of London, The Silent Boy, and The American Boy, a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller and a 2005 Richard & Judy Book Club Choice. He has won many awards, including the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award (the only author to win it three times) and the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger.

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    • 5/5
      We loved these stories, each so different. Have a real flavour of the weird, the strange
    • 5/5
      Subtitled: "Three tales of fear, retribution and death". The first, "Broken Voices", is set a few years before WWI. Two neglected boarding school boys who have nowhere to go are left in the care of an elderly retired teacher over the Christmas holiday. Narrated by the older boy, he tells the story of their isolation and the younger boy's desperate need to go looking around the school's cathedral in the middle of the night.The second story is narrated by a man on the day of his sister's funeral. The siblings had been unable to get along throughout their lives, and the fact that his sister hated him even as she was dying weighs heavy on the man's mind, playing a part in his getting lost between the funeral and his hotel. Driving for hours in the rain, he has a flat tire on a backroad along the coast. He walks toward the only light he sees, and arrives at a cottage among the ruins, with the woman there making it clear she doesn't want to be bothered.The last story is narrated by Clare. She and her husband Gerald have a nice life in the Forest of Dean. Their children are grown and on their own and Clare enjoys working in her art studio. After little communication over the years, Gerald's young nephew calls to ask if he can stay with them for a while, as he's been discharged from the army for an unspecified nervous condition, and with both his parents dead, he has nowhere else. Taylor is an author I'll seek out more from. His stories are truly Gothic, walking a line of apprehension that the reader worries will tip into horror. His characters are often alone and grieving in their loneliness, there's rain or snow, darkness- in other words, the perfect Gothic settings.