Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions meets Alice Hoffman’s The Museum of Extraordinary Things in this chilling ghost story.

mother and daughter move into a crumbling house haunted by the ghost of a girl who performed in Victorian freak shows, through which wind whistles eerily, floorboards creak ominously and things go bump in the night.

In the present day, following the break-up of a controlling marriage, single mother Nell moves into the crumbling Victorian Merry Hall with her teenage daughter, Fern. She’s determined to make a new life but the noises, moving objects, and strange smells in her new home make her increasingly unsettled.

In the 1840s, showman Abel Wenham seduces Dolly, a talented albino girl and makes her the star of his performing collection of ‘freaks’. But after she becomes pregnant with his child, he discards her and imprisons her at Merry Hall, where her only solace is the company of fellow performers Ada the Bear Lady and the Jack the Posturer. They plan to escape with Dolly and her child and set up in business, but Wenham has other ideas.

When Fern admits she, too, is pregnant, it seems as though history may be about to repeat itself. But is Dolly, just one of the ghosts that haunt Merry Hall, reaching out across the centuries to protect her own child?

Told in alternating chapters across two timelines—one in the mid-19th century, one in the present day—this page-turning gothic chiller is ideal for those who love The Whistling by Rebecca Netley, The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell, and The Wayward Girls by Amanda Mason.