The Silent Companions

Novelist Purcell (God Save the King) crafts a virtually flawless work of Gothic fiction with this deeply atmospheric, foreboding story that brings us into the unsettling world of Elsie Bainbridge. Newly widowed, she has been shipped to her late husband's crumbling country mansion to see through a troubled pregnancy. There she discovers resentful servants, hostile villagers, and incredibly strange occurrences. What starts as a few disturbing hallucinations builds into supernatural pandemonium when Elsie and Sarah, her husband's cousin, discover painted wooden figures behind a locked door. These figures, known as "silent companions," seem to move on their own, come back from the virtual dead, and terrorize everyone in the house. Purcell interweaves her narrative, which is set in 1865, with a 17th-century time line written by previous occupants of the mansion, revealing how the silent companions came to live at the estate and their horrifying story.