From the greatest living writer of ghost stories, here is a perfect chiller: a story of two damaged children filled with unease, the supernatural and horror. The remoter parts of the English Fens are forlorn, lost and damp even in the height of summer. At Iyot Lock, a large decaying house, two young cousins, Leonora and Edward, are parked for the summer with their ageing spinster aunt and her cruel housekeeper. At first the unpleasantness and petty meannesses appear simply spiteful, calculated to destroy Edward's equanimity. But when spoilt Leonora is not given the birthday present of a specific dolly that she wants, affairs inexorably take a much darker turn with terrifying, life-destroying consequences for everyone.
'Susan Hill is the grande dame of English supernatural fiction' (Financial Times)
'No one chills the heart like Susan Hill' (Daily Telegraph)
'Part of the fear she conjures up is a sense that this could happen to anyone' (Scotsman)
'An assuredly chilling ghost story, Dolly doesn't leave its questions unanswered. Damage is assumed, noted, but not forgiven, and as the story develops evil is passed through the generations like a stain' (Guardian)
Author
About Susan Hill
Susan Hill has won both the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards and been shortlisted for the Booker. She is the subject of one of the Vintage Living Texts. She runs her own publishing business, Longbarn Books, and edited the literary magazine, Books and Company. Her novels are set for GCSE and A Level, and her play, The Woman in Black, has been running in London's West End for 15 years.
In 2011 Susan Hill was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library, awarded to an author for a body of work.
