Thornhill

2017 | Young Adult (YA)

A darkly gripping tale of two girls separated by thirty years but pulled together by the looming house of Thornhill.

A true chills-down-the-spine ghost story that is equal parts Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Bronte, Alfred Hitchcock and Joan Aiken, Thornhill is a completely absorbing mystery that taps into childhood loneliness and the search for identity, with a healthy dose of heart-stopping dread thrown in for good measure.

I knew it was too good to last. She is back. Without even looking, I knew it. I heard her laughter echoing up the stairwell...

As she unpacks in her new bedroom, Ella is irresistibly drawn to the big old house that she can see out of her window. Surrounded by overgrown gardens, barbed wire fences and 'keep out' signs, it looks derelict.

But that night, a light goes on in one of the windows. And the next day she sees a girl in the grounds. Ella is hooked. The house has a story to tell. She is sure of it.

Enter Thornhill, Institute for Children, and discover the dark secrets that lie within. But once inside, will you ever leave?

Told partly through historic journal entries and partly through beautifully detailed, wordless sepia illustrations, this is an unforgettable story from a striking new talent.

'This is in one sense a classic English lonely-child-and-garden story, in the tradition of Frances Hodgson Burnett and Philippa Pearce; in another it's a ghost story; in another it pays tribute to the dark-sinister-house genre most famously seen in Hitchcock's Psycho. But it's also a story of friendship and courage and of the power of black-and-white images. I think it's terrific.' - Philip Pullman

Pam Sym (Author)