Laura Purcell is a former bookseller and lives in Colchester with her husband and pet guinea pigs. Her first novel for Raven Books, The Silent Companions, was a Radio 2 and Zoe Ball ITV Book Club pick and was the winner of the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award, while Laura's gothic chiller The Corset was acclaimed as a 'masterpiece' by readers and reviewers alike.
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@spookypurcell
From the award-winning author of The Silent Companions.
'Du Maurier-tastic' GUARDIAN
'Deliciously sinister' HEAT
'A clever, creepy read' SUNDAY EXPRESS
Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken.
But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home.
Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralysed and almost entirely mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try and escape her past, but she soon discovers that her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.
Laura Purcell's next novel, The Shape of Darkness, is coming in January 2021...
Deliciously spooky
Anyone familiar with Purcell's previous novels will know she's an expert at bone-rattling tension . and Bone China is just as eerie . Written with an atmosphere of real foreboding, this is a sensational late autumn read as the evenings close in
Du Maurier-tastic . Purcell has a sure storytelling touch, a command of atmosphere and a keen eye for the telling details of social history. Oh, and she stores up some satisfying and suitably macabre final revelations
A Victorian tale replete with laudanum, tuberculosis and possibly fairies . a clever, creepy read
[Laura Purcell] does creeping menace like no one else. With Bone China, once again, I'm sleeping with the lights on
A brilliantly atmospheric and chilling tale and I raced through the pages hardly daring to find out what would happen next! Laura's characters and the world they inhabit are compelling, unsettling and richly drawn. A fabulous tale!
With a cast of mysterious characters, a beautifully written sense of foreboding, and something malevolent (possibly) lurking around every cover, Bone China is a deliciously sinister and chilling read for fans of superior scary fiction
If Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë had a love-child, it would be Laura Purcell. Bone China is a deliciously creepy novel full of rambling houses, storm-soaked nights, sinister secrets and hidden agendas that kept me turning the pages
So many books are hyped up as being the next Jamaica Inn or the next Rebecca, but Bone China really is, and I think Queen Daphne might have to hand over the crown to Queen Laura. The research was just exquisite ... A cut above anything else I've read this year
I absolutely loved it. Sublime gothic atmosphere, completely gripping story and I honestly didn't expect it to hit me so hard emotionally. It's not just that I couldn't put it down, I just couldn't let go of those characters
Profoundly atmospheric and eerie . Full of compelling and beautifully crafted prose and a plot that will have you racing through the pages
This is an absolute treat, all wrapped up in Laura Purcell's gorgeous and compelling prose. I would very happily be pixy-led for days through the pages of this book!
Menacing, macabre and utterly gripping. Laura Purcell has done it again
Brilliant, spine chillingly clever, a fabulously suspenseful tale that will seduce you utterly with its twists and turns
Purcell is rapidly making a name for herself as the queen of the superior bone chiller and this newest novel is no exception ... Naturally nothing is as it appears and a very creepy mystery soon unfolds
I absolutely loved it! I raced through it, transfixed, as the gloomy and atmospheric Morvoren House offered up its chilling secrets. Laura spins her plot with all the mischievous cunning of a Cornish Fairy
Praise for The Corset: A classic Victorian tale of murder most foul, twisted with a curious supernatural thread ... chilling
A contender for my Book of the Year. Beautifully written, intricately plotted, a masterpiece
Intricate, atmospheric and chilling - with a wonderfully dark premise at its heart
A compelling slice of early Victorian gothic . An evocative portrait of a society that punishes women who dare to contravene social norms