120 pages in print. For fans of Guillermo del Toro, Susan Hill, and Daphne Du Maurier.
Old Marsh, the gardener at Belerion Hall, warned the Villiers girl about the dark places and old ruins along the sea-cliffs. “Never go in, miss. Never say a prayer at its door. If you are angry, do not seek revenge by the Laughing Maiden stone or at the threshold of the Tombs. There be those who listen for oaths and vows….What may be said in innocence becomes flesh and blood in such places.”
From childhood until her sixteenth year, Iris Villiers wandered, a wild child in a repressive time, along the stone-hedged gardens and steep cliffs of the coast of Cornwall near her ancestral home. Surrounded by the stern judgments of her grandfather-the Gray Minister-and the taunts of her cruel governess, Iris finds solace in her handsome and beloved older brother who has always protected her.
But when a tragic accident occurs from the ledge of an open window, Iris discovers that she possesses the ability to speak to the dead…
From Publishers Weekly:
“Clegg (The Abandoned) expands the burgeoning backstory of his multivolume Harrow haunted house saga with this poignant chamber tragedy involving young Iris Catherine Villiers (who, as an adult, will become Isis Claviger, oracle of the spook-ridden Hudson Valley academy)…This potent novella, one of Clegg’s best, is both a stand-alone triumph and a powerful new chapter in his evolving series.”
From Fangoria Magazine:
“…a story of love, loss and longing…told with the beautiful prose of an old-fashioned Gothic era.”
From The Strand magazine:
“Haunting yet poignant, Isis is a work that should firmly place Clegg among the all-stars of horror such as Straub, Machen, LeFanu, and Stoker.”
Discover Douglas Clegg's fiction:
Lights Out
Neverland
The Children’s Hour
The Halloween Man
You Come When I Call You
The Hour Before Dark
Nightmare House
Bad Karma
Goat Dance
Breeder
Afterlife
Purity
Dark of the Eye
The Words
Wild Things
Red Angel
Night Cage
Mischief
The Infinite
The Abandoned
The Necromancer
Isis
Naomi
The Nightmare Chronicles
The Attraction
Night Asylum
The Priest of Blood
The Lady of Serpents
The Queen of Wolves
FIC015000 FICTION / Horror
FIC024000 FICTION / Occult & Supernatural
Douglas Clegg is the author of more than 30 books, including the bestsellers Neverland, The Hour Before Dark, and The Priest of Blood. He is married and lives on the coast of New England, where he is writing his next book.