Sarah Rayne

A Dark Dividing

Lucy Trent is used to having the legend of her disreputable grandmother disinterred from time to time - the infamous silent-screen actress Lucretia von Wolff, whose lovers were legion, whose scandals were numerous, whose life ended abruptly in a bizarre double murder and suicide at the Ashwood film studios in 1952. Lucy rather enjoys Lucretia's legend - although most of the family would prefer it to be quietly forgotten. But when a body is found in the now-derelict studios, brutalised in a macabre echo of the 50-year-old case, disturbing facts about the past begin to emerge... Facts which point back to the eerie legend of the child known simply as Alraune. The child named after Lucretia's most famous film. The child who may never have existed at all. In the ensuing murder investigation, Lucy is to discover the truth about her family's dark and often poignant history - a history which spans the glittering concert halls of 1920s Vienna to the bleak environs of wartime Auschwitz. And at the heart of it all lies the shocking truth about the mysterious child called Alraune.

Roots of Evil

The old Tarleton music hall on London's Bankside is the subject of a mysterious restraint order that has kept it closed for over ninety years. When Robert Fallon is asked to survey the building, he finds clues indicating that its long twilight sleep may contain a sinister secret. Joining forces with researcher Hilary Bryant, Robert discovers the legend of the Tarleton's 'ghost' - a mysterious figure who was first glimpsed during the time of the charismatic performer Toby Chance, once the darling of Edwardian audiences until he vanished suddenly and inexplicably in the early 1900s. After almost a century, the Tarleton's dark silence is about to end. But there are those who find its re-opening a threatening prospect and,as Robert and Hilary delve into the macabre history of one of London's oldest music halls, they both become menaced by the secrets of the past.

Ghost Song

Property of a Lady (A Nell West and Michael Flint Haunted House Story)

The Death Chamber

Spider Light

Calvary Gaol, standing bleak and forbidding on the Cumbrian hillside, exerts a curious hold over Georgina Grey. For her famly's history is closely bound up in its dark and terrible past. It's there that her great-grandfather worked as a prison doctor in the 1930s; where his involvement in a bizarre experiment would change the course of his life forever. -- Dust jacket.

The Sin Eater (A Nell West and Michael Flint Haunted House Story)

Fosse House, home of the reclusive Luisa Gilmore, harbours curious secrets -- secrets that stretch back almost a century, to the ill-fated Palestrina Choir in its remote Belgian convent. When Oxford don Michael Flint travels to the house to trace the origins of the long-dead Choir, he is at once aware of the house's eerie menace. Who is the shadowy young man who lurks in the grounds, and why does his exact likeness appear in a sketch from 1917? What is the strange whispering that echoes through the corridors? And why is Luisa so afraid when a storm makes it necessary for Michael to spend the night inside the house? Back in Oxford, when Nell West uncovers the story of the infamous 1917 'Holzminden sketch' -- the lost, legendary drawing from World War I - a dark fragment of the past begins to stir. A fragment that Michael, in the lonely old house, may not be able to resist.

The whispering

When Nell West starts extending her Oxford antiques shop, she is not expecting to uncover strange fragments of its past: fragments that include a frightened message scribbled on old plasterwork, dated 1850 and referring to someone called Thaisa.She also uncovers a mysterious link with a village on the Dorset coast - a village with an ancient bell tower and dark memories of a piece of music known locally as Thaisa's Song. The sea is gradually encroaching on the derelict tower, but the old Glaum Bell still hangs in the lonely bell chamber and although it was silenced after an act of appalling brutality during the reign of Henry VIII, local people whisper that its chime is still occasionally heard.

The bell tower

A widowed antiques dealer travels with her young daughter to her late husband's boyhood home, a dwelling that still houses the evil from a crime perpetrated long ago.

The Silence

When novelist Theo Kendal inherits the remote Norfolk house where his cousin Charmery was murdered, he believes it will bring him closer to the truth about her death. It will also be the ideal place to finish his new book. But the bleak Fenn House is a lonely and sometimes uncomfortable place to spend the winter. And the strangest thing is that Theo's new novel seems to be writing itself - and heading in an unplanned direction. Theo finds himself describing a young boy called Matthew who lives in constant fear of a visit from the cold-eyed men. Struggling to understand the dangerous secrets that surround him and his family, Matthew inhabits a terrifying world where people die in macabre circumstances, where they can be imprisoned without trial or reason, their identities wiped from the world forever. And then Theo discovers that Matthew and his family really existed, part of a dark and violent segment of recent history that threatens to reach out across the years to tear his life apart. And somehow it all connects to the death of his cousin Charmery.

House of the Lost

An abandoned English village holds generations of dark secrets that are about to be uncovered in this gothic thriller by the author of A Dark Dividing. Some fifty years ago, Priors Bramley was emptied of its residents—all for the sake of a Cold War experiment with chemical weapons that went wrong. Since then, the cordoned off town has been known at The Poisoned village. But the locals don’t know the half of it. Now, as The Poisoned Village is set to be reopened, its secrets are set to be unleashed. Tracing the contagion leads inexorably to the long-abandoned Cadence Manor, once home to generations of secretive, powerful bankers and their elegant wives. What happened there in the years before the World War I? What murderous madness infected the family? And what is the source of the eerie music that, even now, can be heard drifting down the crumbling village streets?

What Lies Beneath

Thriller

Todeskammer

Ghost song

"When Phineas Fox is asked to help with the music for bicentenary celebrations at Cresacre Abbey School, he does not expect to find fragments of a sinister medieval ritual within a locally-written opera. As Phin follows the threads of the past, he discovers that curious legends about the school's history still linger, including the fate of a group of nuns who disappeared without trace more than 200 years before. What exactily happened to them? And who is the mysterious Ginevra, the shadowy figure whose true identity has never been known? As he delves further, Phin begins to unravel a series of interlocking secrets, each one more puzzling--and sinister than the last."--Provide by publisher

Song of the damned

Music Macabre

A mysterious 1940s’ portrait leads researcher Phineas Fox to uncover a devastating wartime secret in this chilling novel of suspense. Phineas Fox finds it impossible to refuse when his sport-loving neighbour Toby begs for his help in finding out what’s happened to his cousin Arabella, who seems to have disappeared without trace. The only clue to her whereabouts is an obscure 1940s’ portrait left in her flat, a gift from her godfather, Stefan. The painting depicts the mysterious Christa Klein, Stefan’s sister - and an alleged murderess. Was Christa Klein really guilty of a monstrous crime? What exactly happened within brooding Wewelsburg Castle back in 1941? And what does it have to do with Arabella’s disappearance? As Phin delves further, he uncovers evidence of a lost piece of music and a devastating wartime secret: an atrocity whose repercussions reach to the present day.

Chord of Evil

Introducing professional researcher Phineas Fox in the first of a brand-new series of chilling mysteries. Phineas Fox has mixed feelings when he's asked to research the infamous 19th-century violinist Roman Volf for a TV documentary. Hanged for his part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Volf was a notorious criminal and womaniser, whose glittering talent was undermined by his scandalous private life. However, on uncovering evidence which suggests that Volf could not have been involved in the Tsar's murder, Phin's investigations lead him to the west coast of Ireland - and a series of intriguing, interlocking mysteries reaching from 1881 to the present day. Was Roman Volf executed for something he didn't do? And what is his connection with the reclusive Maxim Volf now living in County Galway? Phin's enquiries will unearth a number of dark secrets which lurk below the surface of the quiet Irish village of Kilcarne.

Death Notes

When novelist Theo Kendal inherits the remote Norfolk house in which his cousin Charmery was murdered, he believes it will bring him closer to the truth about her death. It will also be the ideal place to finish his new book. But the bleak Fenn House is a lonely and sometimes uncomfortable place to spend the winter. And the strangest thing is that Theo's new novel seems to be writing itself - and heading in an unplanned direction. Theo finds himself describing a young boy called Matthew who lives in constant fear of a visit from the 'cold-eyed men'. And then Theo discovers that Matthew and his family really existed, part of a dark and violent segment of recent history that threatens to reach across the years to tear his life apart. And somehow it all connects to the death of his cousin Charmery. 'Rayne handles a complicated story with many skeins very cleverly. A top psychological thriller' Good Reading magazine

Sarah Rayne

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