★達夫妮．杜穆里埃、莎拉．華特絲書迷不容錯過

Arson, obsession, unrequited love, and a blighted aristocratic family with secrets lie at the center of this twisted Gothic mystery set in crumbling English manor.

Intense, repressed Dorrie is secretly in love with vivid, self-assured Alys. When Dorrie’s abusive marriage implodes, the two women flee to Alys’ remote family home, Dovecombe Manor. Hoping for a haven, Dorrie finds instead a ruin sunk deep in eerie woodland, haunted by a historic curse and held in limbo by a decade-old unsolved arson.

When suspicions about the fire focus on Alys, eroding her sanity, Dorrie sets out to protect the woman she loves. Dorrie’s quest draws her into the sinful pasts of the manor and its secretive and vengeful occupants, including calculating matriarch Caroline, who will stop at nothing to restore Dovecombe and her family to their former grandeur. But in this bleak, wild landscape stalked by violence, pulsing with malice and dread, the most dangerous thing of all might be Dorrie.

 

Alex Clark is a former stonemason and archaeologist who lives in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Her short stories and poems have appeared in The Mechanics’ Institute Review Online, Shooter Literary Magazine, Prole, Litro Online, Lighthouse Journal, The North, and anthologies by The Fiction Desk. Dovecombe is her first novel.

 

“I was utterly transfixed by the eerie atmosphere of Dovecombe, a marvelous Gothic mystery, brimming with family secrets, cursed property, class tension, and the dangers of illicit desire.”－Leigh Stein, bestselling author of If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant For You.

“This is a feast of a book. Excellently plotted and psychologically rich, it's at once a tantalizing Gothic mystery, a haunting love story, and a deeply moving tale of refuge and restoration. Clark is a talent to watch and this is a stunning debut.”－Emma Stonex, author of The Sunshine Man and The Lamplighters