From the author of the “dark and devious...beautifully written” (Stephen King) Mirrorland comes an “atmospheric, thrilling, and utterly captivating” (Booklist) gothic tale set on a remote Scottish island where the locals are hiding a deadly secret.
Maggie Mackay has been haunted her entire life. No matter what she does, she can’t shake the sense that something is wrong with her. And maybe something is...
When she was five years old, Maggie announced that a man on the remote island of Kilmeray in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides—a place she’d never visited—was murdered. Her unfounded claim drew media attention and turned the locals against each other, creating rifts that never mended.
Now, nearly twenty years later, Maggie is determined to discover what really happened, and what the villagers are hiding. But everyone has secrets, and some are deadly. As she gets closer to the horrifying truth, the island’s legendary and violent storms begin to rage again and Maggie’s own life is in danger...
Unnerving, enthralling, and filled with gothic suspense, The Blackhouse is a spectacularly sinister tale readers won’t soon forget.
ISBN-13: 9781982199685
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Publication Date: 02-06-2024
Pages: 352
Product Dimensions: 8.00h x 5.25w x 0.84d
Carole Johnstone is the award-winning author of the novels Mirrorland and The Blackhouse. She lives in the Highlands of Scotland, although her heart belongs to the wild islands of the Outer Hebrides.
Read an Excerpt
Prologue Prologue
It wasn’t the screams he remembered most, although they crashed to shore inside the howling, furious wind and ricocheted for hours around the high cliffs above the beach. It wasn’t the storm or the roaring, foaming waves that carved great snaking wounds through the wet sand and stole its shape from under his feet.
It wasn’t the dark or the flashing torchlight. Or the frantic hours of men pushing boats into the wild surf: motorboats, fishing boats, even old wooden sgoths. All to be smashed into the bay’s high headlands or hurled back onto the shore like stones from a slingshot.
It wasn’t the long, tired wails of the women whose silhouettes stood in a clifftop vanguard ahead of the silver-starred inland sky. Nor those waving white arms out on the rocks, which became slower and less frequent as the screamed chorus grew quieter. And it wasn’t the wondering about which of those arms, those bobbing heads that disappeared and sometimes reappeared, belonged to his father.
It wasn’t even the eerie silence that came after. The exhaustion of energy and grief and hope. The exhaustion of wind and rain and thunder and sea.
It was the tide bell out on those rocks. Its low, heavy ring growing ever more muffled under the weight of water and all that time.
And it was the black tower casting an invisible shadow over the sand and bay and calming waves.
They were always what he remembered the most. Sometimes they were all he could think about.
The tide bell. And the black tower.
And knowing that every man on those rocks would never come back. Because of him.
Because of what he’d wanted. Because of what he’d done.
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