Book Review: The Haunting Season by Various Authors

“Curl up, light a candle, and fall under the spell of The Haunting Season..”

Published in 2020, The Haunting Season is a collection of short ghostly stories by Bridget Collins, Natasha Pulley, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Andrew Michael Hurley, Jess Kidd, Elizabeth Macneal, and Laura Purcell.

From a bustling Covent Garden Christmas market to the frosty moors of Yorkshire, from a country estate with a dreadful secret, to a London mansion where a beautiful girl lies frozen in death, these are stories to make your hair stand on end, send shivers down your spine and to serve as your indispensable companion to the long nights of winter.

Book Review: The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

“But now she knows she was foolish to believe that evil existed only out there. It was here, among them, walking on two legs, passing judgement with a human tongue.”

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is set in the 1600s in a Norwegian coastal village where, after a storm has killed off all the island’s men, the women are struggling to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft. The sinister figure leading the hunt is Absalom Cornet who arrives from Scotland after burning witches in the northern isles. Now, two women, Maren and Ursa, are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both. But the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom’s iron rule threatening Vardø’s very existence.