The White Forest
A Novel
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
In this hauntingly original debut novel about a young woman whose peculiar abilities help her infiltrate a mysterious secret society, Adam McOmber uses fantastical twists and dark turns to create a fast-paced, unforgettable story.
Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret—an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects—and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London’s elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation with the goal of discovering a strange hidden world, a place he calls the Empyrean.
A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young woman with the ability to sense the souls of inanimate objects and view mystical realms searches for her place in 19th-century England in this dark and gothic debut. Ever since the unexplained death of her mother, Jane Silverlake has had the ability to see "beyond the rational" into "a universe of animate space concealed within the inanimate." As she reaches adulthood, her only friends are Madeline Lee, shunned by society because of her father's unseemly daguerreotypes of naked women, and Nathan Ashe, the man they both love. Nathan is far more intrigued actually, obsessed by Jane's ability to touch the mystical realm he calls the Empyrean. When Nathan disappears while attending a s ance run by notorious spiritualist Ariston Day, Jane realizes she must come to terms with her own mysterious talents in order to save him. McOmber's debut is deliberately written and heavy with atmosphere, evoking the dark weight of doomed love as well as the spiritualist craze that fascinated so many Victorians.