The Blackhouse
A Novel
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3,5 • 2 notes
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- 12,99 $
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- 12,99 $
Description de l’éditeur
From the author of the “dark and devious...beautifully written” (Stephen King) Mirrorland comes an “atmospheric, thrilling, and utterly captivating” (Booklist) gothic tale set on a remote Scottish island where the locals are hiding a deadly secret.
Maggie Mackay has been haunted her entire life. No matter what she does, she can’t shake the sense that something is wrong with her. And maybe something is…
When she was five years old, Maggie announced that a man on the remote island of Kilmeray in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides—a place she’d never visited—was murdered. Her unfounded claim drew media attention and turned the locals against each other, creating rifts that never mended.
Now, nearly twenty years later, Maggie is determined to discover what really happened, and what the villagers are hiding. But everyone has secrets, and some are deadly. As she gets closer to the horrifying truth, the island’s legendary and violent storms begin to rage again and Maggie’s own life is in danger…
Unnerving, enthralling, and filled with gothic suspense, The Blackhouse is a spectacularly sinister tale readers won’t soon forget.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Maggie MacKay, the principal narrator of this eerie gothic thriller from Johnstone (Mirrorland), has long held the unshakable belief that her name is really Andrew MacNeil, that she's from a place called Kilmeray, and that someone there killed her—despite the apparent lack of evidence that anyone named Andrew MacNeil ever lived, or died, on that storm-buffeted Outer Hebrides island. Recently discharged from a London psychiatric hospital after a psychotic breakdown following her mother's traumatic death, Maggie sets off to Kilmeray, determined to unravel the mystery. Not surprisingly, most of the island's inhabitants prove less than forthcoming, one exception being hunky farmer Will Morrison, to whom Maggie feels an instant attraction. Soon, alarming events start to occur, like the night she discovers the mummified corpses of two crows outside her isolated cottage. As Maggie's research gradually makes headway, and her romance with Will heats up, suspense grows with the introduction of a second narrator, whose horrific account unfolds 25 years earlier. Despite the pace occasionally dragging, this ghost story ultimately packs a gale-force wallop. Johnstone is a writer to watch.
