The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

This was shortlisted for the Man Booker Price 2009.  I don’t normally read ghost stories, but this one caught my eye.  The prose is beautiful and the characters realistically drawn.  The story centres around a crumbling Georgian mansion called Hundreds Hall in rural Warwickshire.  Its owners, mother, son and daughter are struggling to keep the house running.  Times are changing, this is post war Britain and the once grand house is now in steep decline.  Dr Faraday is called out to the house to see a servant girl who has been taken ill.  He has visited the house once before, on Empire Day Fete, when he was ten years old.  His mother used to work at the house many years before.   He is shocked by the state of the house and its inhabitants.  Then mysterious things start to happen and Dr Faraday gets more and more entwined with the family’s lives.   I won’t spoil it for you!  Well worth a read and one of those stories that stays with you.   

Foreign & Far Away by Writers Abroad

This is the fourth anthology published by Writers Abroad.  It is a collection of fiction/non-fiction short stories and poetry.  Author Amanda Hodgkinson has written the foreword.  There are some wonderful examples of evocative writing exploring the relationship between people and the places in which they live.   I am delighted that one of my stories appears in the anthology.  It is an ideal book for dipping into from time to time.  All proceeds from the sale of the book will go to Book Aid International.  

On Writing By Stephen King

Part memoir and part writing manual I found this book extremely readable.  It is written in a no-nonsense, witty and interesting way.  Even if you are not an aspiring writer it gives you an understanding of the writer’s craft.  It also gives you an insight into the mind of one of the bestselling writers in the world.  It is an account of his early life and how these episodes influenced his writing.   It finishes with the horror of his near fatal accident in 1999, when he was mowed down by a van driver and how writing helped him to recover.