And she must descend into the darkness at the heart of theWraxford Mystery to find the truth, even at the cost of her life.

Years before, a family disappeared atWraxford Hall, a decaying mansion in the English countryside with a sinister reputation.Now the Hall belongs to Constance. For Constance's bequest comes in two parts: a house and a mystery. It is a world of apparitions, of disappearances and unnatural phenomena, of betrayal and blackmail and black-hearted villains-and murder.

So begins The Séance, John Harwood's brilliant second novel, a gripping, dark mystery set in late-Victorian England. Constance is left alone, her only legacy a mysterious bequest that will blight her life. ' Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for Constance's sister, the child she lost.Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance takes her to a séance: perhaps she will find comfort from beyond the grave. A haunting tale of apparitions, a cursed manor house, and two generations of women determined to discover the truth, by the author of The Ghost Writer Sell the Hall unseen burn it to the ground and plow the earth with salt, if you will but never live there.

The Seance by John Harwood