Horror Panel with Will Maclean and Lucie McKnight Hardy - Birmingham
About this Event
Join us for an exciting horror panel with Will Maclean and Lucie Mcknight Hardy to discuss their latest novels Solace House and Night Babies. The evening will consist of an author talk followed by an audience Q&A and a signing.
About Solace House by Will Maclean:
Solace House is A wildly imaginative firework of a novel that is nigh on uncategorisable, Solace House sees a group of students discover the possibility of another realm lying parallel to our own after clearing out a reclusive hoarder's former residence.
Summer, 1993, and Alex Lane finds himself at the end of the University summer term, broke and without any concrete plans. So, when he's offered the chance to join a group of students tasked clearing out Solace House, a large Victorian residence left to the University by a reclusive hoarder called Flayne, he jumps at it. The other students are a mixed bunch, but Alex quickly falls into a close friendship with the mercurial, red-headed Ella.
At first the house seems to be an ordinary, if grandiose, property. But as the team begin sorting through piles of junk, they stumble upon Flayne's journals in which he details his obsession with his missing mother, his discovery of a strange place called Bewise, and - most mysteriously - his belief in another realm lying parallel to ours, along with coded instructions on how it might be reached.
As the students continue to sort through the detritus, one of Alex's companions becomes increasingly obsessed with the hidden secrets of Solace House, Flayne's missing mother, and the possibility that, if only they can decipher Flayne's increasingly unintelligible writings, they might gain knowledge beyond their wildest dreams. That is, assuming, they are willing to sacrifice everything.
About Night Babies by Lucie McKnight Hardy:
Things were looking up for Astrid Aspden and her partner, Kit, until their house flooded. With Astrid's first solo art exhibition just weeks away, her paintings are ruined and excitement has turned to despair.
She is thrown a lifeline when her best friend Flora invites her to stay in a run-down chapel she and her partner, Sim, are renovating in the Brecon Beacons. As Astrid and Kit settle into their new surroundings to salvage her work, they soon learn about the unsettling history of the chapel and what lies beneath the nearby reservoir.
As the weeks go by, tensions simmer between Astrid and Flora as sour memories flare up from their teenage past and deep wounds are laid bare from an ill-fated school trip to Florence. Her relationship with Kit begins to fray as the chapel and the surrounding hostile beauty of the valley begin to intrude on their lives.
Astrid throws herself into her work but the longer she spends in the chapel the more she begins to notice things: handprints on her paintings, shadowy figures reflected in the reservoir and voices whispering in the night. As the darkness of the Welsh valley closes in on Astrid, will she be able to run from the looming horror or be consumed by it?
Whether it is the past, the otherworldly, or the truth - they all haunt this menacing and claustrophobic novel.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 5.00 to GBP 24.00
