Good House for Children

'In her beautifully written debut, Kate Collins gives the haunted house novel a refreshing renovation, while retaining a deliciously chilling atmosphere that fans of Shirley Jackson will love. I was entranced' Francine Toon, author of PineThe perfect place to destroy a family...The Reeve stands on the edge of the Dorset cliffs, awaiting its next inhabitants. Despite Orla's misgivings, her husband insists this house will be the perfect place to raise their two children. In 1976, Lydia moves to Dorset as a nanny for a family grieving their patriarch. She soon starts to hear and feel things that cannot be real, but her bereaved employer does not listen when Lydia tells her something is wrong.Separated by forty years, both Lydia and Orla realise that the longer they stay at the Reeve, the more deadly certain their need to keep the children safe from whatever lurks inside it... Nothing is quite what it seems at the Reeve, and with its pervasive atmosphere of claustrophobia and dread, Kate Collins' gothic creation will chill you to the core.

I absolutely loved A Good House for Children and was gripped right from the start. A dark and haunting read, I absolutely loved this claustrophobic and chilling story. Beautifully written with skilfully developed characters, Collins explores the themes of motherhood and identity. As the story builds, so does a pervasive sense of menace and looming tragedy, making it impossible to put down., A Good House for Children is a wonderfully dark fable, filled with subtle dread. Kate Collins mixes folklore and the gothic in a perceptive exploration of the terrors of motherhood and the ravages of grief. It's a novel filled with quiet horror, and the Reeve is a wonderful creation, elegant and haunted - a perfect family home which casts and long and deadly shadow., Collins intertwines the tales of Orla and Lydia, who have each lived in the Reeve: a house subject to haunting, but also a place where boundaries blur . . . between different times, but also of the sense of reality and the other, and ultimately, the edge of sanity itself. A beautifully written, creepy tale reminiscent of Shirley Jackson., A chilling, unsettling read that drew me in and stayed with me long after I had finished it ... Kate Collins knows exactly how much to show us and how much to leave to our imaginations. A perspective, accomplished ghost story that managed to be both tender and truly terrifying.

Kate Collins was born in Cork, Ireland and has spent her career in trade and academic publishing. She studied literature and medieval history at Lancaster University and went on to complete an Master's degree in contemporary literature at the same university. She lives in Oxfordshire.

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