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  • Published: 1 April 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099583349
  • Imprint: Vintage Children's Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $23.00

The Woman in Black





Susan Hill's original ghost story will induce tears of fear. Beware of reading alone at night.

‘I did not believe in ghosts’

Few attend Mrs Alice Drablow’s funeral, and not one blood relative amongst them. There are undertakers with shovels, of course, a local official who would rather be anywhere else, and one Mr Arthur Kipps, solicitor from London. He is to spend the night in Eel Marsh House, the place where the old recluse died amidst a sinking swamp, a blinding fog and a baleful mystery about which the townsfolk refuse to speak.

Young Mr Kipps expects a boring evening alone sorting out paperwork and searching for Mrs Drablow’s will. But when the high tide pens him in, what he finds – or rather what finds him – is something else entirely.

In the 'Backstory' discover more classic ghost stories and some real-life ones too...

Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

  • Published: 1 April 2015
  • ISBN: 9780099583349
  • Imprint: Vintage Children's Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $23.00

About the author

Susan Hill

Susan Hill has been a professional writer for over fifty years. Her books have won awards and prizes including the Whitbread, the John Llewellyn Rhys and a Somerset Maugham, and have been shortlisted for the Booker. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Honours. Her novels include Strange Meeting, I’m the King of the Castle, In the Springtime of the Year and A Kind Man. She has also published autobiographical works and collections of short stories as well as the Simon Serrailler series of crime novels. The play of her ghost story The Woman in Black has been running in London’s West End since 1988. She has two adult daughters and lives in North Norfolk.

www.susanhill.org.uk

Also by Susan Hill

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Praise for The Woman in Black

Hill’s haunting tales may be slim, but they pull no punches…

Harper's Bazaar

Heartstoppingly chilling

Daily Express

A rattling good yarn, the sort that chills the mind as well as the spine

Guardian

She writes with great power… Authentically chilling

Daily Telegraph

An excellent ghost story… magnificently eerie… compulsive reading

Evening Standard

Told with great cunning and beautifully written

Washington Post

No one chills the heart like Susan Hill

Daily Telegraph

One of the strongest stories of supernatural horror...the work bursts into life and does not flag until the end

Washington Post

Terrifying... creepy classic

Daily Mail

Irresistibly dramatic... Susan Hill has done the genre real honour

Chicago Tribune

Susan Hill is the reigning queen of ghost writers and her period novella…is a classic, broodingly creepy and at times terrifying

Michael Hogan, Observer

The Woman in Black won’t fail to have you looking over your shoulder!

Kettle

Still gives us nightmares.

Jonathan Hatfull, SciFiNow

It is bursting with classic Gothic horror motifs and Susan Hill is a master of atmospheric descriptions. She evokes so cleverly the decrepit Eel Marsh House, the mention of its name enough to make the locals pause, their faces darken in unspoken wariness… The Woman in Black gives a thrilling sense of unease and provides just the right level of things that go bump in the night for a spine-tingling good read.

Khoollect

This spine-tingling novel… will certainly keep your nerves jangling

Woman's Weekly

Haunting its readers for more than 40 years… Once read, it’s hard to forget the utter strangeness of The Woman in Black… For all its magnificent period detail, and its ability to immerse us in the dark, dank place it creates, it goes beyond its own story. It acts as a portal… Read it

Jeanette Winterson, The Times