Shadows (Book 1)

Genre: Paranormal Historical Crime

Kate Lawrence can sense the shadow of violent death and it's a curse she longs to escape. But, joining her cousin Sylvia and partner Michael in their mission to restore and revitalise the old mansion of Llys y Garn, she finds herself in a place thick with the shadows of past deaths.

She seeks to face them down but new shadows are rising. Sylvia's manipulative son, Christian, can destroy everything. Once more, Kate senses that a violent death has occurred…

A haunting exploration of the dark side of people and landscape, set in the majestic and magical Welsh countryside.

Excerpt

No!

I didn’t hear the word, but I felt it, pushing me out of the cramped attic room, with its leaking dormer window among the chimney pots.

All through our tour of the house, I’d been waiting for some shadow to spring out on me. Sylvia had led me up staircases, down corridors, through one derelict room after another, but this, high up under the eaves, was the first sense of death and dark emotion I’d felt. There was fear in this garret, and a lingering panic, but mostly there was a strident, fierce defiance, determined to push me out.

No!

So I pushed back, and followed Sylvia in.

I’d done it. I’d conquered. Not so difficult after all. I just had to be strong. It was still there, that melting pot of fear and resistance, but I could put it firmly to one side.

‘…and perhaps the guttering.’ While I was vanquishing my shadows, Sylvia was considering the large blooms of damp on the sloping ceiling. She looked at me anxiously. ‘Could we?’

‘Sure!’ I felt absurdly all-conquering. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ I followed her, gleeful in my triumph, back down servants’ stairs to the ground floor.

She flung open double doors. ‘Ta-Ra! The drawing room. It’s the only one we’ve seriously tackled so far. What do you think?’

‘Hey.’ I could see why the room had inspired her into action. It was all mock-medieval plasterwork, with a Gothic fireplace and touches of stained glass in the tall arched windows that opened onto the terrace. Sylvia had decked it out with William Morris wallpaper, a chaise longue upholstered in faded red velvet, an Oriental rug and a brass oil-lamp with Tiffany shade. It was hard not to be impressed.

‘Wonderful. Creative. Just right.’ I reeled off compliments. It certainly demonstrated the potential of the place. Every other room merely screamed ‘Rewiring! Dry rot! Woodworm!’

‘I love it,’ said Sylvia. ‘Well, I think that’s it here. Now come outside.’

In the entrance hall, with its patterned tiles and mock-Tudor staircase, we struggled with the bolts of the towering front door, and emerged into the rinsing chill of a spring morning. Tissues of mist were clearing from the tree tops and the distant fields were already free from frost, though the sloping pasture below us was still crystalline grey.

From a mossy balustrade with crumbling urns, I surveyed the house. Solid Victorian, with heavy-handed touches of Gothic Revival; a pointed window here and there, a gargoyle or two, writhing vines on the woodwork.

‘We were so lucky to find it,’ said Sylvia happily. ‘When it went up for auction, I expect most people were put off by the amount of work it needs. Listed building and all that.’

‘But you and Mike didn’t mind?’

‘Of course not! I know there’s masses to do, but it’s such a dream and we’ve got money between us. Not endless money but you know, if we manage it carefully.’

I laughed. Sylvia had never managed anything carefully in her life, least of all money.

‘And if we can get the easy bits up and running, like the lodge, well, it will just pay for itself, won’t it?’

I doubted it, but practicalities could come later.

‘Of course it’s a gamble,’ she went on. ‘But we fell helplessly head over heels in love with it as soon as we saw it. And it does have incredible possibilities, doesn’t it?’

‘Oh God, yes.’ If the initial financial nightmares could be sorted out. That was where I came in. Nothing like a challenge.

‘Obviously guests,’ Sylvia took my arm and led me along, scrunching on gravel. ‘Music festivals perhaps. And a restaurant. You know, local organic produce, and our own herbs and vegetables. Themed weekends.’

We reached the end of the terrace. ‘And of course this is the real pièce de résistance.’

I jumped. There had been something so comfortably bourgeois about the Victorian façade that I was unprepared for what lay round the corner. The remnant of an old house. Much older, crouching behind the new. Nothing fake about this Gothic. Crumbling stonework, sagging beams, a small bush sprouting from a chimney.

‘What do you think?’ asked Sylvia, gleefully. ‘I could have taken you in through the house, but it’s so much more dramatic from this angle. Isn’t it incredible?’

I stared into the darkness behind crooked mullioned windows. My victory over an odd twinge in a servant’s attic was forgotten. This was altogether more forbidding. There were centuries upon centuries fossilised here.

‘A pity there’s so little of it,’ Sylvia continued. ‘Not much more than a hall, really, with a minstrel’s gallery. Oh, and there’s a dungeon. With a spiral stair! Lord knows how old it is. Mike’s researched it all, says it was already here in 1540. The rest of the house was demolished and rebuilt in Queen Anne’s time, and then again in Eighteen something.’ She patted the neat Victorian stonework as we passed.

I shivered. Hardly surprising with the frost still intact on the shaded gravel. Shiver with cold if I must, but it was absurd to shiver because of what might lie within.

There might be nothing.

Then again… Dungeons, Sylvia said. I’d dealt with an attic. Did I really have to deal with a dungeon too, on my first day?

Long Shadows (Book 2)

Llys y Garn is an ancient mansion riddled with mysteries. What tragedies haunt the abandoned servants' attics, the derelict great hall, the deep mire in the woods?

1884. The Good Servant. Nelly Skeel is the unloved housekeeper whose only focus of affection is her master's despised nephew.

1662. The Witch. Elizabeth Powell, in an age of bigotry and superstition, who would give her soul for the house she loves.

1308. The Dragon Slayer. Angharad ferch Owain, expendable asset in her father's eyes, dreams of wider horizons, and an escape from the seemingly inevitable fate of all women.

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About the Author

Thorne was born in Luton and graduated from Aberystwyth University (history) and from the Open University (Law). She set up a restaurant with her sister and made miniature furniture for collectors. She lives in Pembrokeshire, which forms a background for much of her writing, as does Luton.

She writes psychological mysteries, or "domestic noir," exploring the reason for crimes and their consequences, rather than the details of the crimes themselves. and her first novel, "A Time For Silence," was published by Honno in 2012, with its prequel, "The Covenant," published in 2020. "Motherlove" and "The Unravelling" were also published by Honno. "Shadows" is set in an old mansion in Pembrokeshire and is paired with "Long Shadows," which explains the history and mysteries of the same old house. Her latest crime novels, "Fatal Collision" and "Bethulia" are published by Diamond Crime. She's a member of Crime Cymru.

She has also written the Science Fiction trilogy "Salvage," including "Inside Out," "Making Waves" and "By The Book" as well as a collection of short stories, "Moments of Consequence."

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