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Longlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger in hardback, this thrilling and unnerving debut follows Edie who works at the Elysian Society where she channels the dead for clients desperate for a few last moments with those they have lost. When she meets Patrick, and spends time as his glamorous wife who tragically drowned, the circumstances surrounding her death soon appear mysterious, but Edie is already falling in love...
About the author
Sara Flannery Murphy was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. Throughout Murphy’s childhood, her family divided their time between Little Rock and Eureka Springs, a small tourist town and artists’ community in the Ozark Mountains. Murphy received her MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. While living in St. Louis, she studied with writers including Kathryn Davis. She also had the chance to teach creative writing. She later attended the University of British Columbia with a focus on library science.
An avid bookworm, Murphy especially loves thrillers and mysteries. Some of her major influences include Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Brönte. She enjoys TV series and films that explore the dark and the uncanny, from procedural dramas to horror.
Murphy currently lives in an Oklahoma college town with her husband and son. Her shorter work has appeared in journals including Storyglossia and Tammy. The Possessions is her first novel.
Summary
‘The first time I meet Patrick Braddock, I'm wearing his wife's lipstick.’
Edie works at the Elysian Society, channelling the dead for clients desperate for a few last moments with their loved ones. She is professional and discreet, one of the best in the team.
But everything changes when Patrick, a distraught husband, comes to look for traces of his drowned wife in Edie. The more time that Edie spends as the glamorous, enigmatic Sylvia, the closer she comes to falling in love with Patrick. And the more mysterious the circumstances around Sylvia’s death start to seem ...
Foreword
'The first time I meet Patrick Braddock, I'm wearing his wife's lipstick.'
Additional text
‘[S]upernatural romance that thrives on imaginative world-building.’
