Haunting of Alma Fielding

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE ‘A page-turner with the authority of history’ PHILIPPA GREGORY‘As gripping as a novel. An engaging, unsettling, deeply satisfying read’ SARAH WATERSLondon, 1938. Alma Fielding, an ordinary young woman, begins to experience supernatural events in her suburban home. Nandor Fodor – a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical research – begins to investigate. In doing so he discovers a different and darker type of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss – and the foreshadowing of a nation’s worst fears. As the spectre of Fascism lengthens over Europe, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With rigour, daring and insight, the award-winning pioneer of historical narrative non-fiction Kate Summerscale shadows Fodor’s enquiry, delving into long-hidden archives to find the human story behind a very modern haunting.‘An empathetic, meticulous account of a spiritual unravelling; a tribute to the astonishing power of the human mind - but also a properly absorbing, baffling, satisfying detective story’ AIDA EDEMARIAMA PICK OF THE AUTUMN IN THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND THE GUARDIAN

Hidden realities of a different kind lie beneath the story of Kate Summerscale’s The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story, which delves into the 1930s case of the “Croydon Poltergeist”, investigated by Nandor Fodor, chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, Gothic, dark and scandalous ... A gripping account, A chilling real life ghost story ... This book scared me witless, Expertly told, with all the twists and turns of a chilly novel by Wilkie Collins or Barbara Vine ... The more Summerscale delves, the more she finds out about the hidden compartments of the human mind, A terrific true ghost story ... her best book since The Suspicions of Mr Whicher ... She has achieved the perfect balance between her central story and its cultural context.

Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Galaxy British Book of the Year Award, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. Her third book, Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace, was a Sunday Times bestseller; while her fourth, The Wicked Boy, was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2010, she lives in London. katesummerscale.com