The Lamplighters
A Novel
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3.3 • 68 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
“Transported me effortlessly…Haunting, harrowing and heartbreaking, this is a novel that will stay with you.” --Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push
“A ghost story and fantastically gripping psychological investigation rolled into one. It is also a pitch-perfect piece of writing. . . . As with Shirley Jackson’s work or Sarah Waters’s masterpiece Affinity, in Stonex’s hands the unspoken, unexamined, unseen world we can call the supernatural, a world fed by repression and lies, becomes terrifyingly tangible.” --The Guardian (London)
Inspired by a haunting true story, a gorgeous and atmospheric novel about the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from a remote tower miles from the Cornish coast--and about the wives who were left behind.
What strange fate befell these doomed men? The heavy sea whispers their names. Black rocks roll beneath the surface, drowning ghosts. And out of the swell like a finger of light, the salt-scratched tower stands lonely and magnificent.
It's New Year's Eve, 1972, when a boat pulls up to the Maiden Rock lighthouse with relief for the keepers. But no one greets them. When the entrance door, locked from the inside, is battered down, rescuers find an empty tower. A table is laid for a meal not eaten. The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a storm raging round the tower, but the skies have been clear. And the clocks have all stopped at 8:45.
Two decades later, the keepers' wives are visited by a writer determined to find the truth about the men's disappearance. Moving between the women's stories and the men's last weeks together in the lighthouse, long-held secrets surface and truths twist into lies as we piece together what happened, why, and who to believe.
In her riveting and suspenseful novel, Emma Stonex writes a story of isolation and obsession, of reality and illusion, and of what it takes to keep the light burning when all else is swallowed by dark.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This is one of the creepiest and most unshakeable mystery novels we’ve read in a while. It’s set in 1992, 20 years after the unexplained disappearance of three lighthouse keepers just off the coast of Cornwall captured the world’s imagination. Eager to solve the case, an ambitious writer approaches the keepers’ wives, who reveal that their hardworking but apparently simple husbands actually led dark and complex lives. Novelist Emma Stonex brilliantly draws inspiration from an unsolved disappearance in 1900, lending this twisty story a sense of authenticity. Her intensive research into the lonely rigors of lighthouse living creates a chilling mood that permeates every paragraph like the salty sea air. We were enchanted by the way that each perspective—even that of the ocean itself—adds another layer of suspense. After this haunting read, you may cross that lighthouse tour off your next seaside vacation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Stonex's spectacular debut wraps a haunting mystery in precise, starkly beautiful prose. In 1972, a boatman arrives at the desolate Maiden Rock lighthouse off the coast of Mortehaven, Cornwall, to pick up one of its three keepers for a scheduled break. Instead, he finds the trio—principal keeper Arthur Black; Black's junior, Bill Walker; and third-in-command Vincent Bourne—gone. The tower is locked from the inside, the log chronicles strange storms that never happened, and the clocks are stopped at 8:45. Twenty years later, a writer determined to crack the unsolved mystery contacts the women the lighthouse keepers left behind. Now living in Bath, Helen Black returns to Mortehaven twice a year to commemorate her husband. She writes regularly to Bill's wife, Jenny, hoping to be forgiven for Bill's onetime obsession with her, but Jenny discards the letters in anger. Now in a troubled marriage, Vince's former girlfriend, Michelle Davies, is sure that he played no role in the disappearance, despite his earlier brushes with the law. Seamlessly marrying quotidian detail with ghostly touches, the author captures both the lighthouse's lure and the damage its isolation and confinement wreak on minds and families. The convincing resolution brings a welcome note of healing. Readers will eagerly await Stonex's next.
Customer Reviews
Dull tale
Tries but fails