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'Deliciously chilly' Guardian
'Humming with suppressed hysteria and madness' The Times
'Wonderfully evocative' Heat
Hare House is not its real name, of course. I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable . . .
In the first brisk days of autumn, a woman arrives in Scotland having left her job at an all-girls school in London in mysterious circumstances. Moving into a cottage on the remote estate of Hare House, she begins to explore her new home - a patchwork of hills, moorland and forest. But among the tiny roads, dykes and scattered houses, something more sinister lurks: local tales of witchcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad.
Striking up a friendship with her landlord, Grant, and his younger sister, Cass, she begins to suspect that all might not be quite as it seems at Hare House. And as autumn turns to winter, and a heavy snowfall traps the inhabitants of the estate within its walls, tensions rise to fever pitch.
Sally Hinchcliffe's Hare House is a modern-day witch story, perfect for fans of Pine and The Loney.
'A beautiful, slow burn of a novel, eerie and shimmering in equal measure' - Mary Paulson-Ellis
About the author
Sally Hinchcliffe was born in London but grew up all over the world in the wake of her father’s diplomatic career. She spent many years working at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew developing research systems for taxonomists until a two-year sabbatical in Eswatini gave her the impetus to take her writing seriously. After completing an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, her first novel, Out of a Clear Sky, was published by Macmillan in 2008. She moved to south-west Scotland to work as a writer and freelance editor full time, when she is now out exploring rural Dumfries and Galloway on her bike. Hare House is her second novel.
Summary
A woman leaves her old life behind, escaping to a remote estate in Scotland. But what secrets lie in her past? And how long can they stay hidden?
Foreword
A woman leaves her old life behind, escaping to a remote estate in Scotland. But what secrets lie in her past? And how long can they stay hidden?
Additional text
Slightly gothic, it is a quietly eerie novel, beautifully written, one that keeps a reader alert
Report
A beautiful, slow burn of a novel, eerie and shimmering in equal measure. The bewitching prose brilliantly evokes the bleak glories of a remote Scottish landscape, while the subtle shifts of plot and perspective lure the reader towards an unsettling denouement where nothing is quite what it seems. A dark uncanny read and all the more satisfying for that Mary Paulson-Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker and Emily Noble's Disgrace
