HARE HOUSE – SALLY HINCHCLIFFE

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