The Underhistory

Book excerpt: 'Wholly unique and deeply compelling' - ESQUIRE 'Hauntingly creepy' - ERIN KELLY 'A heartfelt and chilling gothic tragedy' - CHRIS WHITAKER People come to visit my home and I love to show them around. It's not the original house of course. That was destroyed the day my entire family died. But I don't think their ghosts know the difference. Pera Sinclair was nine the day the pilot intentionally crashed his plane into her family's grand home, killing everyone inside. She was the girl who survived the tragedy, a sympathetic oddity, growing stranger by the day. Over the decades she rebuilt the huge and rambling building on the original site, recreating what she had lost, each room telling a piece of the story of her life and that of the many people who died there, both before and after the disaster. Her sister, murdered a hundred miles away. The soldier, broken by war. Death follows Pera, and she welcomes it in as an old friend. And while she doesn't believe in ghosts, she's not above telling a ghost story or two to those who come to visit Sinclair House. As Pera shows a young family around her home on the last haunted house tour of the season, an unexpected group of men arrive. One she recognises, but the others are strangers. But she knows their type all too well. Dangerous men, who will hurt the family without a second thought, and who will keep an old woman alive only so long as she is useful. But as she begins to show them around her home and reveal its secrets, the dangerous men will learn that she is far from helpless. After all, death seems to follow her wherever she goes... Sinister and lyrical, The Underhistory is a haunting tale of loss, self-preservation and the darkness beneath.