The Bookseller Editor’s Choice for October 2018
One of the Guardian’s 50 Biggest Books of Autumn 2018
‘The most vivid and compelling portrait of late Victorian London since The Crimson Petal and the White’ Sarah Perry, bestselling author of The Essex Serpent
‘A gloriously unorthodox confection, part Wilkie Collins, part Conan Doyle, with a generous handful of police procedural and a splash of Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm. Both disquietingly eerie and impossible to read without laughing out loud … A cracking good read.’ Guardian
‘Tremendously good – and tremendously good fun’ Observer
‘Brilliantly written, compelling and satisfying in so many ways. It demands to be read by a fire on a cold winter evening (but make sure the doors are locked before you begin). I only wish it had been twice as long.’ Irish Times
‘The House on Vesper Sands is a rollicking good read. The dialogue crackles with verve and wit, and the plotting is as intricately satisfying as a heavy pocket watch. The setting may be Victorian, but in modern parlance this novel is an absolute banger.’ Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13
‘Ladies and gentlemen, the darkness is complete.’
It is the winter of 1893, and in London the snow is falling.
It is falling as Gideon Bliss seeks shelter in a Soho church, where he finds Angie Tatton lying before the altar. His one-time love is at death’s door, murmuring about brightness and black air, and about those she calls the Spiriters. In the morning she is gone.
The snow is falling as a seamstress climbs onto a ledge above Mayfair, a mysterious message stitched into her own skin. It is falling as she steadies herself and closes her eyes.
It is falling, too, as her employer, Lord Strythe, vanishes into the night, watched by Octavia Hillingdon, a restless society columnist who longs to uncover a story of real importance.
She and Gideon will soon be drawn into the same mystery, each desperate to save Angie and find out the truth about Lord Strythe. Their paths will cross as the darkness gathers, and will lead them at last to what lies hidden at the house on Vesper Sands.
‘Like the love child of Dickens and Conan Doyle, but funnier than either’ Liz Nugent, author of Lying in Wait
#vespersands | 18.10.18
