Showing results by author "Celia Fremlin" in All Categories

The summer holidays have begun. In a seaside caravan resort, Isabel and her sister Meg build sandcastles with the children, navigate deckchair politics, explore the pier's delights, gorge ice cream in the sun. But their half-sister Mildred has returned to a nearby coastal cottage where her husband - the mysterious Uncle Paul - was arrested for his first wife's attempted murder. Now, on his release from prison, is he returning for revenge, seeking who betrayed him?

Jolted from sleep by the ringing of the telephone, Imogen stumbles through the dark, empty house to answer it. At first, she can't quite understand the man on the other end of the line. Surely he can't honestly be accusing her of killing her husband, Ivor, who died in a car crash barely two months ago. As the nights draw in, Imogen finds her home filling up with unexpected guests, who may be looking for more than simple festive cheer. Has someone been rifling through Ivor's papers? Who left the half-drunk whiskey bottle beside his favourite chair?

Louise would give anything - anything - for a good night's sleep. Forget the girls running errant in the garden and bothering the neighbours. Forget her husband who seems oblivious to it all. If the baby would just stop crying, everything would be fine. Or would it? What if Louise's growing fears about the family's new lodger, who seems to share all of her husband's interests, are real? What could she do, and would anyone even believe her? Maybe, if she could get just get some rest, she'd be able to think straight . . .

Celia Fremlin's classic Gothic story collection is a masterpiece of psychological horror, mining the darkest elements of marriage, childhood, and ageing; probing paranoia, grief and toxic relationships; inviting the ghosts of the past into our present; and exploring the nightmarish secret impulses and supernatural forces lurking beneath suburban Britain.

Milly Barnes has just arrived in the seaside town of Seacliffe. Between windswept walks on the beach, she settles into lodgings and finds work as a Daily Help. Except this isn't her real name - 'Milly' is on the run from her past life, escaping a nightmare marriage. Abandoned by her first husband for another woman, she took revenge by marrying Gilbert: but this proved a terrible mistake. Trapped in a London basement flat, she became a victim of his increasingly paranoid delusions.

Zu spät merkt Stella, dass sie ihren Liebhaber Gerald zum perfekten Lügner gemacht hat, der sich vor seiner Frau und seinen Kindern aus allem herausreden kann, und vielleicht auch aus einem Mord...