Laura Purcell

The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023: Jan – Mar

Happy New Year! 2023 is already in full swing and we in the AU Books Team are back and ready to look ahead at some of this year’s most anticipated books. With so many books published each week, month and year, it’d be impossible to read them all. So this is only the briefest snapshot…

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Terrify your TBR with the Book Team’s favourite spooky reads!

The AU Review film buffs have had their say, now it’s time for the Books Team to have theirs! If you’re considering spending Halloween buried in a book with the lights firmly on (no judgement here!), allow us to recommend a few spooky season reads! From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz On…

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The Shape of Darkness

Book Review: The Shape of Darkness reinforces Laura Purcell as a master of building suspense

Laura Purcell’s fourth novel with Raven Books once again sees the ‘queen of the sophisticated and spooky page turner’ serve us up a Gothic, historical treat. Whilst none of her subsequent books have been quite so spine-chilling as 2017’s The Silent Companions, this latest offering, The Shape of Darkness is a suitably spooky novel about violence, grief…

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Book Review: Laura Purcell presents another fine Gothic horror with Bone China

Hester Why has her share of secrets. Travelling under a false name, on the run from something that – for the time being – remains a mystery, she’s on her way to Morvoren House, an isolated manor on the Cornish coast. Tasked with nursing Morvoren’s aging owner, Miss Louise Pinecroft, Hester joins a household in…

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Five Books You Need To Read This Month: November

Another month. Another five books. We might be getting closer to Christmas, but there’s nothing particularly “festive” about this month’s five titles. Though they’d all make wonderful gifts for the book lover in your life. It is a particularly fiction heavy list this month, with a debut short story collection, a highly anticipated second novel,…

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Book Review: You’ll sleep with the lights on after reading Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions

Elsie Bainbridge, newly widowed, is sent to her late husband’s estate to see out the last few weeks of her pregnancy. With a skeleton staff, abandoned, dusty rooms, and a surrounding village terrified of the house, The Bridge is far from the haven Elsie hopes it to be. But when she and Sarah, her husband’s…

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