MA in Publishing
MA in Publishing
Posted by eag221
4 March 2024When you think of the South-West of England, what springs to mind? Perhaps sunny weather, cities such as Exeter, Bath, and Bristol, or spectacular coastlines – you need only look as far as the cover of Publishing and Literary Networks in the South-West (this is a shameless plug only depending on how much my editor tells me off for it) to see the bright, friendly reputation the region has acquired. However, behind every setting of beauty and peace lies darkness you can only really spot if you squint. From cryptids such as the Beast of Bodmin and the Owlman of Mawnan, to atrocities enacted against accused witches in Exeter and accounts of spectral hellhounds rampaging throughout Dartmoor, the South-West’s deep history and Celtic roots leaves it filled with ghosts, monsters, and everything in-between. Many an author has noted the region’s spooky potential, leading to a long tradition of mysteries and paranormal novels set around the coast and the moors. Thus, for the literary pleasure of you – the reader – I have compiled a list of some of the best, most menacing and most terrifying novels set in the region, reinforcing the fact that horror can lurk beneath the surface of the places we love, and the scariest thing about the South-West is not, in fact, the time I was charged £6 for a pint in a Padstow pub.
Jamaica Inn, Daphne du Maurier (1936)
The first title on this list is probably my favourite of the bunch, because, dear reader, this is my list and I do as I like. Named after the inn of the same name which still sits in the centre of Bodmin Moor, Jamaica Inn follows headstrong heroine Mary Yellan, who moves to the inn after the death of her mother in 1815 to live with her aunt Patience and her violent, drunk husband Joss Merlyn. Steadily uncovering the culture of smuggling, wrecking and murder that revolves around the inn, Mary finds an unlikely ally in Joss’ criminal brother, Jem, but in the process discovers that the world of Jamaica Inn is more dangerous than she could have even imagined.
As a novel, Jamaica Inn is tense, claustrophobic, and seething with menace. Even before we reach murders and shocking betrayals, the constant presence of domestic violence in the household and the misogynistic culture of the inn’s gang of criminals is enough to make the skin crawl, both in visceral horror and terror for Mary, imprisoned in a dark underworld she seems to have no chance of escaping. Joss Merlyn is an archetypal patriarchal villain, whose abused wife Patience acts as a stark depiction of a victim of intimate partner violence which still resonates almost a century after the novel’s publication, while Bodmin itself is made almost monstrous in its depiction as a lawless, rugged, and empty place: a Gothic, carnivalesque mirror to the Romantic sublime. Though it may not be the most supernatural novel on this list, Jamaica Inn makes up for it in atmosphere, shocking twists, and some truly reprehensible villains.
Rawblood, Catriona Ward (2015)
As you may be able to tell as this list progresses, I have a particular soft spot in my heart for the Gothic (and am consequently the kind of woman that moral panics were started over in the 1790s). Rawblood sets its scene in Devon, where the house of the same name is home to the mysterious, eccentric Villarca family, of which Iris and her father are the last remaining members. A cursed lineage, the Villarcas are haunted by a spectre referred to only as ‘Her’, carried down through their blood and who acts as a forbear of death and heartbreak. When Iris breaks her promise to her father to remain isolated – and to never fall in love – consequences and ghostly vengeance is swift, and as we are presented with multiple intertwined timelines, only then does it become clear just how deep the Villarca curse runs.
As with any of Ward’s novels, writing a spoiler-free synopsis is almost impossible: you might recognise her the author of the award-winning Last House on Needless Street, which is equally impossible to sum up without giving everything away. Most astounding about Rawblood, however, is the fact that it was Ward’s debut novel. Intricately woven and with incredible attention to detail, Ward brings Dartmoor to vivid life at the turn of the 20th century, bringing together the dark sides of Victorian life and the eventual horrors of the First World War to come. Much like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, Rawblood is a character in and of itself: perpetually looming, dragging the characters to their fates, and enmeshed in strings of death, witchcraft and ancient forces which knot together throughout the characters’ lives. Scary in places, viscerally gruesome in others, Ward brings her characteristic narrative skill and wild imagination to Rawblood, making it a novel worthy of the famous August Derleth Award.
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
Didn’t I mention spectral black dogs earlier? The most famous of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels takes us back to the moors of Devon, and into a world of family curses (Dartmoor seems to have a lot of those), monstrous hounds and creepy old houses. When aristocrat Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the Devon moors, his corpse surrounded by the tracks of a giant hound, Victorian England’s favourite detective duo return to investigate the supposed Baskerville family curse before the heir to the Baskerville family meets an equally grisly fate, with typical Holmes pragmatism fighting in the face of supernatural mystery.
I will be nice, dear reader, and not spoil the ending of a novel published over a century ago. What I will say, however, is that there was a reason why Sherlock Holmes held the late 19th and early 20th centuries in thrall, and why he is still enduringly popular to this day. Mixing detective story with the best sort of Gothic trappings, The Hound of the Baskervilles gives all the thrills of the mystery enmeshed with the creeping menace of the ghost story, with all the charm of Dr Watson’s narrations and Holmes’ eccentricities in the face of nothing making sense. Interestingly enough, it is said that Doyle’s inspiration for the novel came from the history of notorious country squire Richard Cabell, reported to have sold his soul to the devil in the 17th century. Upon his death in 1677, legend says that black dogs gathered around his burial chamber, and the figure of a spectral huntsman is now said to ride across Dartmoor, flanked by baying, shadowy hounds. In other words, if you’re going to go walking on Dartmoor, maybe stick to the hiking paths during the day.
Bone China, Laura Purcell (2019)
If you walk into any Waterstones in the country, chances are you’ll see a novel by Laura Purcell lovingly perched on a themed table somewhere. Making her debut with the dark and atmospheric historical Gothic The Silent Companions, Purcell’s books are beloved by readers and book clubs across the UK (and me!), and her Cornish-set novel Bone China is a brilliant addition to this collection. With her family destroyed by consumption, Louise Pinecroft watches as her father undertakes controversial medical trials in the caves under their isolated cliffside home, while her maid tells her disturbing stories about the fairies who hunt the coastline, stealing people away to their realm. Forty years later, when Hester Why flees her position as a housemaid in London and becomes a nurse to the now paralysed and mute Miss Pinecroft, she discovers that the world of Cornish folktales and rituals may be more dangerous than the world of scandal she has left behind.
Like Jane Eyre with hints of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace and Riley Sager’s The Only One Left, Bone China is a historical Gothic with bite. Purcell is excellent at producing compelling female
protagonists who shine in the settings she places them in, where 19th century society is as much to blame for sinister-goings on as the supernatural. A genre pioneered by female authors such as Ann Radcliffe, and dominated by its female heroines, Purcell’s crafting of a Gothic narrative, with its twists, timelines and family secrets, is deft and exciting even for seasoned enjoyers of the genre, and the Cornwall of her imagination is alike the Yorkshire of the Brontës: a menacing and shadowy place of isolation and old customs which the 19th century hasn’t quite managed to extinguish. In the recent decades, Cornwall has become renowned as a place of beaches, surfing, and summer holidays, but Purcell beautifully drags us back to its Pagan roots, anchoring her readers in a murky coastal underworld of scandal, secrets and superstition.
The Secret of Crickley Hall, James Herbert (2006)
Commonly regarded as one of the most popular British chiller authors, James Herbert is perhaps most famous for his 1974 horror novel The Rats, about – you guessed it – mutant man-eating rats. Though his penultimate novel before his death in 2013, Crickley Hall is just as horrifying as his earlier work, and while it may be a 600-page brick of a book, I feel justified in saying that it is worth every single one. Following the disappearance of their son Cameron, Gabe and Eve Caleigh, along with daughters Loren and Cally, relocate to the isolated Crickley Hall in Exmoor so Gabe can take a new job opportunity – and to ease family tension on the anniversary of Cameron’s disappearance. However, as with every story about a family moving to a creepy new home, there is more to Crickley Hall than the Caleighs anticipate. Interlocking supernatural terrors with a timeline of horrors faced by evacuees imprisoned at Crickley Hall during the Blitz sixty years ago, Crickley Hall soon devolves into a haunted house for the history books.
Momentarily switching on my commissioning editor brain, if I were to comp The Secret of Crickley Hall to another novel – not that, given Herbert’s hugely popular bibliography, it would be a struggle on my part to sell it – I imagine I would settle on Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. Evil has seeped into the landscapes of these huge tomes, whether that be the forests of Maine or the isolated wilds of Exmoor, and at their hearts are parents fighting to protect their children, even in the face of preternatural forces they themselves cannot understand. Crickley Hall is stained with residual atrocities faced by the evacuees in the second timeline, such a divisive period in British history, and which reinforces one of the novel’s key threads: the vulnerability of children. Where the ghost story is fundamentally concerned with loss, this is not just that of historical loss which infects the current narrative – it is just as concerned with that which its characters cannot bear to lose. With vicious scares and some seriously creepy villains, Crickley Hall is as deserving of its accolades as Bly Manor and Eel Marsh House.
The Haunting, Alex Bell (2016)
Feeling a little freaked out by this list? Starting to think that the South-West is some nightmare-scape you never noticed before? Fear not, dear reader – here at the MA Publishing course (another unsubtle plug, provided my editor doesn’t tell me off), we believe in a broad and diverse approach to books and literary culture, so the last title on my list is a YA title. Part of Little Tiger’s phenomenally popular Red Eye list, and by the same author as the YA classic Frozen Charlotte, The Haunting, like Jamaica Inn, centres around a Cornish inn named The Waterwitch, built from the timber of a cursed shipwreck. Protagonist Emma returns to the inn seven years after the accident that left her using a wheelchair, except the inn is haunted by its dark history, and in particular, the vengeful Waterwitch herself.
While The Haunting is not as heart-shudderingly scary as Rawblood or Crickley Hall, don’t be fooled by its age category: Bell writes fundamentally good horror, which is as applicable to adults as it is to her teen audience. Following the tried and tested formula of taking the ordinary and making it terrifying, The Waterwitch is so brilliant of a setting that it could be in any little Cornish village you know – overlooking the beach at Harlyn, or nestled by the harbour at Mevagissey (maybe even potentially charging £6 for a pint in Padstow). Fundamentally Cornish in its world of witches and shipwrecks, The Haunting is a fast-paced YA romp of a mystery, and breaks the barriers of expected protagonists in horror literature by placing a wheelchair user at the forefront of the action. YA books are brilliant at forecasting underrepresented voices in their narratives – especially brilliant when they give you a good scare at the same time.