Night Fall

Joan Aiken

Sep 2022 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

When Meg Frazer's actress mother is killed in a Hollywood accident, nineteen-year-old Meg finds it hard to adapt to life in Britain with her cold, distant father . . . and at night she is haunted by a strange dream of a face which she is sure has something to do with her past.

Meg follows a clue from the past to a remote Cornish Village. There she becomes involved in a nightmare web of terror and suspense . . . She meets a young man called Toby, who is different from her staid fiancé, but how is he wrapped up in the secrets she is unravelling?

First written as a short suspense story in the 1960's, this YA romantic thriller went on to win an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Joan Aiken in 1972

"A cunning thriller romance, with the ever popular suspense and terror... good holiday reading for the not so bookish" Elaine Moss, Times

"Young, beautiful, talented, engaged to a handsome and successful stockbroker, she should have been content to stay in London. But irresistibly Meg was drawn back to Penlaggen...back into a forgotten past... And waiting for her was a man who exercised a strange and fearful power over her...and a secret that led her ever closer to danger" Fiction Database

"The suspense is wonderfully sustained and leads to a terrifying climax, and there is even a satisfying love story" Publisher's Weekly

"A dream has haunted nineteen-year-old Meg for ten years, ever since her mother's death. Now engaged and determined to exorcise the dream before her marriage, Meg drives to the remote Cornwall village of Penleggen where the author's gift for direful scene and gripping incident takes control...the physical danger mounts as Meg's psychological mystery is solved and a literate thriller gathers momentum" Kirkus review

About the author

Joan Aiken, English-born daughter of American poet Conrad Aiken, began her writing career in the 1950s. Working for Argosy magazine as a copy editor but also as the anonymous author of articles and stories to fill up their pages, she was adept at inventing a wealth of characters and fantastic situations, and went on to produce hundreds of stories for Good Housekeeping, Vogue, Vanity Fair and many other magazines. Some of those early stories became novels, such as The Silence of Herondale, first published fifty years ago in 1964. Although her first agent famously told her to stick to short stories, saying she would never be able to sustain a full-length novel, Joan Aiken went on to win the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Whispering Mountain, and the Edgar Alan Poe award for her adult novel Night Fall. Her best known children's novel, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, was acclaimed by Time magazine as 'a genuine small masterpiece'. In 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature, and although best known as a children's writer, Joan Aiken wrote many adult novels, both modern and historical, with her trademark wit and verve. Many have a similar gothic flavour to her children's writing, and were much admired by readers and critics alike. As she said 'The only difference I can see is that children's books have happier endings than those for adults.' You have been warned . . .