The Seance

The breakthrough novel from one of Australia's finest writers - a gripping story of ghosts, betrayal and murder in Victorian England.

The narrative, gracefully conceived, beautifully achieved, races along

Atmospheric... Harwood's writing adds a layer of ironic distance to fog effects, black-hearted villains and other old chestnuts

Brilliantly atmospheric dark mystery... Try this if you like being scared out of your wits

Everything you could possibly ask for from a novel in this genre

Harwood again proves himself a gifted storyteller... Seamlessly plotted, it is utterly compelling and full of suspense

Harwood hops between narratives and time to give us a full history of the hall and its occupants, and his research, while impressive, never overwhelms the plot or his characters. Collins and Braddon would be proud

John Harwood's brilliant second novel, a gripping, dark, mystery set in late Victorian England

An elegant, original and exciting mystery story

Superbly realised... reminds us that the real horrors lurk within the reader's mind

John Harwood was born in Hobart, Tasmania. Educated in Tasmania and Cambridge, he went on to become Head of the School of English and Drama at Flinders University, Adelaide. He is the author of two books of criticism, Olivia Shakespear and W. B. Yeats and Eliot to Derrida: The Poverty of Interpretation and the novels The Ghost Writer and The Asylum.

London, 1881. Constance Langton lives in a gloomy home with a distant father and a grief-stricken mother; seeking refuge and comfort, she secretly attends a séance which has tragic consequences. Left alone, her only legacy is a mysterious inheritance that will blight her life and take her deep into a world of apparitions, betrayal and blackmail, black-hearted villains - and murder.

The Ghost Writer

'Its complexities provoke a feverish breathlessness. Well written and subtly constructed' Ruth Rendell, Sunday Times

A compelling, atmospheric and well-crafted story

An elegant homage to the Victorian ghost story tradition... Makes your flesh creep

Irresistible... Structured like a haunted mansion

Harwood is enviable skilled, handling pacing, delivery and plot with assurance and sly humour... The Ghost Writer has powerful moments and...a delicacy and tenderness that make it wonderfully readable

John Harwood grew up in Hobart and studied literature and philosophy at the universities of Tasmania and Cambridge. He has published biography, political journalism, satire and poetry. He is also the author of The Seance.

Viola Hatherley was a writer of ghost stories in the 1890s whose work lies forgotten until her great-grandson, as a young boy in Mawson, Australia, learns how to open the secret drawer in his mother's room. There he finds a manuscript, and from the moment his mother catches him in the act, Gerard Freeman's life is irrevocably changed. What is the invisible, ever-present threat from which his mother strives so obsessively to protect him? And why should stories written a century ago entwine themselves ever more closely around events in his own life? 
 
Gerard's quest to unveil the mystery that shrouds his family, and his life, will lead him from Mawson to London, to a long-abandoned house and the terror of a ghost story come alive.

John Harwood

A twisting tale of greed, deceit and betrayal

Readers are guaranteed a thoroughly diverting time in Harwood’s not-to-be-trusted hands… A dizzying dance…we love every minute of it

Harwood has a talent amounting to genius for channeling the spirit of 19th-century sensation fiction

Harwood, master of creeping Victorian horror, does it again in his latest tale of pervasive evil and madness

It is a brilliantly constructed 21st-century take on a 19th-century literary form and a satisfactorily confusing read

A young woman wakes in a strange bed. 
 
A sickly light filters through a metal grille. 
 
Doctor Maynard Straker steps into the room, and speaks. 
 
‘Have no fear, Miss Ashton. I am entirely at your service.’ 
 
This, however, is not her name. 
 
 And she should not be here – in the Asylum. 
 
She is Miss Georgina Ferrars, and she can prove it. 
 
But when Dr Straker sends a telegram to her uncle in London, the reply is swift: 
 
GEORGINA FERRARS HERE STOP 
YOUR PATIENT MUST BE IMPOSTER STOP 
 
Madness? Mistaken identity? Or are there more malevolent forces at work?

John Harwood

Praise for The Asylum

A twisting tale of greed, deceit and betrayal

Readers are guaranteed a thoroughly diverting time in Harwood’s not-to-be-trusted hands… A dizzying dance…we love every minute of it

Harwood has a talent amounting to genius for channeling the spirit of 19th-century sensation fiction

A twisting tale of greed, deceit and betrayal

Readers are guaranteed a thoroughly diverting time in Harwood’s not-to-be-trusted hands… A dizzying dance…we love every minute of it

Harwood has a talent amounting to genius for channeling the spirit of 19th-century sensation fiction

A twisting tale of greed, deceit and betrayal

Readers are guaranteed a thoroughly diverting time in Harwood’s not-to-be-trusted hands… A dizzying dance…we love every minute of it

Harwood has a talent amounting to genius for channeling the spirit of 19th-century sensation fiction

Books by John Harwood

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