The Lesley Glaister Collection Volume One

Book excerpt: Three dark and mesmerizing novels from an award-winning writer with the “ability to pull terror and suspense from just about anywhere” (Kirkus Reviews). In Lesley Glaister’s world, the domestic and the bizarre walk hand-in-hand. This haunting collection is a testament to the visionary powers of “a natural storyteller who knows how to keep the reader turning the pages” (The Independent). Limestone and Clay: Nadia is a sculptor driven by a single obsession: to conceive a child. When she learns that her geographer husband has donated his sperm to his former lover, who is now pregnant with his child, it is the ultimate betrayal—and warrants the ultimate payback. “Terrifying . . . Glaister truffles her way down to the grim heart, where we find out what makes people tick like time-bombs.” —The Daily Telegraph Digging to Australia: Twelve-year-old Jennifer Maybee spends most of her time alone with her favorite book, Alice in Wonderland. But a revelation from her parents and an encounter with a strange-eyed man set her hurtling into a “topsy-turvy land” of sinister secrets not even Lewis Carroll could have imagined. “Dangerous secrets and sinister undertones power this uncommon coming-of-age tale. . . . Masterful.” —Publishers Weekly Honour Thy Father: In a decaying house in the lowlands of England, four spinster sisters live in self-imposed isolation. For more than sixty years, Milly, Agatha, and the identical twins Ellen and Esther—“Ellenanesther”—have been trapped together, haunted by the specter of their father. As eighty-year-old Milly reminisces, a gothic mystery takes shape: Why is Milly always counting the knives? How did their mother drown under the dyke? And who is baby George, locked away in the cellar? Honour Thy Father is the winner of the Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask Awards. “Eerie and satisfying—a horror story told with tenderness.” —The Sunday Times