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A haunting tale of apparitions, a cursed manor house and two generations of women determined to discover the truth, by the author of The Ghost Writer. Sell the Hall unseen burn it to the ground and plow the earth with salt, if you will but never live there…Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for Constance's sister, the child she lost. Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance takes her to a séance. Perhaps she will find comfort from beyond the grave. But the meeting has tragic consequences. Constance is left alone, her only legacy a mysterious bequest that will blight her life. So begins this brilliant and gripping novel, a dark mystery set in late Victorian England. It is a world of apparitions of disappearances and unnatural phenomena of betrayal and blackmail and black hearted villains and of murder. Constance's bequest comes in two parts: a house and a mystery. Years before, a family disappeared at Wraxford Hall, a decaying mansion in the English countryside with a sinister reputation. Now the Hall belongs to Constance, and she must descend into the darkness at the heart of the Wraxford mystery to find the truth even at the cost of her life.
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Reviews
"Many of the creepy late Victorian familiars abound in The Séance: the dark woods of the English countryside, the ruined mansion with secret passages and hidden chambers and fog on the moors. There's even a sarcophagus in a dead fireplace, a tricked-out suit of armor and some apparatus for collecting electricity when lightning strikes. Drafts blow out candles at the most inopportune times. The lit
Washington Post Book World
"Elegant…The Seance captures the particular flavor of desperate morbidity typical of the Victorians…The other side of Victorian sentimentality and melancholy was, of course, its ruthless opportunism; the middle and upper classes wallowed in sentimental bathos about dead children while blithely enjoying the products of child labor…At the heart of every effective ghost story lies some pitiless truth
Salon
"This crackerjack Victorian thriller has all the elements of a classic ghost story…The Australian writer's narrative is seamless; despite the supernatural underpinnings of his story, the reader willingly suspends disbelief. And Harwood understands that the true horror of The Seance lies in the prison Victorian society created for young women without money or prospects. Modern readers will hold the
Seattle Times