HarperCollins Publishers
October 2023
On Sale: October 17, 2023
Featuring: Adam Chapman; Emma Chapman; Ashley Smith
112 pages ISBN: 0063297450 EAN: 9780063297456 Kindle: B0BSFV6K6W Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
New York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson pens
a spectacularly spine-chilling novella in which an American
art student in London is invited to join a classmate for the
holidays at Starvewood Hall, her family’s Cotswold
manor house. But behind the holly and pine boughs, secrets
are about to unravel, revealing this seemingly charming
English village’s grim history.
Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her
junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a
last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman
brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the
Chapman family. The Cotswold manor house, festooned in pine
boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a
dream come true for Ashley. She is mesmerized by the cozy,
firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of
Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma’s aloof and
handsome brother.
But Adam is being investigated by the local police over
the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and
there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path
between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to
wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Is she
in a grand romance? A gothic tale? Or has she wandered into
something far more sinister and terrifying than she’d
ever imagined?
Over thirty years later the events of that horrific week
are revisited, along with a diary from that time. What began
in a small English village in 1989 reaches its ghostly
conclusion in modern-day New York, many Christmas seasons
later.
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