Winner of the W H Smith Thumping Good Read Award
As featured on the Radio 2 Book Club and the Zoe Ball ITV Book Club
(An) extraordinary, memorable and truly haunting book ‘ Jojo Moyes
(It) shone, for originality for the sheer quality of the writing, the characters and some masterly chills ‘ Peter James

Some doors are locked for a reason…

Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband ‘s crumbling country estate, The Bridge.
With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband ‘s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure a Silent Companion that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself…

Laura Purcell is a former bookseller, she lives in Colchester with her husband and pet guinea pigs. Her second novel for Bloomsbury, gothic chiller The Corset, was published in 2018.
laurapurcell.com
@spookypurcell