Winter is the perfect opportunity for catching up on your
reading list, especially Christmas when it is dark outside, and inside Christmas
lights and flickering candles create the perfect ambience for a ghostly tale. Whilst
M R James and Sheridan Le Fanu are my usual Christmas go-to authors, it’s nice
when unexpected delights fall into the Christmas reading pile. Here are four thumping
good reads to pass the dreary nights of winter with.
Now fans of Tom Burke will know that the author Arthur
Calder-Marshall is Tom’s maternal grandfather, I’ve been interested to read
some of his work for a while, so I was delighted when I came across a couple of
second-hand books written by him.
If you love a good haunted house tale, then this first story
is certainly a book for you, it is suitably eerie and will give you the required
goose bumps when reading!
The Scarlet Boy – Arthur Calder-Marshall
The tale is narrated by George Grantley. He receives a
letter from his friend Sir Christopher “Kit” Everness in 1959, proclaiming it
was time for the Everness family to settle down, and would George assist them in
finding their dream home. The family specify that the house has to be in
Wilchester, close to a day school as their daughter, Rosa, hates the boarding
school she goes to, and be a large, run down property with a garden that they
can make their own.
George agrees to the task and learns that Anglesey House is
up for sale and he thinks it would be perfect. George remembers the property
from when he was a child, playing with his friend Charles Scarlet. Although
they were friends, George remembered that Charles was a wilful and vicious
child, wanting to play games involving torture. It was as though Charles was
possessed by the spirit of someone else. He had a tree house in the garden and
whilst still a child he fell and broke his neck. George had always been fond of
Charles’s mother as she was “beautiful and gracious” unlike his own mother, so
he continued to visit the house even after Charles’s suicide.
“A disturbing adult
novel of an innocents encounter with unearthly evil...”
George tells Kit that he has found a house for the family,
but rumours abound that the place is haunted. Kit takes no heed of George’s
warning and so the family moves in…
