Due to her husband’s wealth, and his sudden death so soon after their marriage, rumors and scandal are breathing down Elsie’s neck, but the villagers and her limited staff are also quite superstitious about her, and the house. The best Gothic Horror novel I’ve read in a long time!Įlsie, recently widowed, and pregnant with her first child arrives in a remote village, with her husband’s cousin, Sarah, to live in an old home, owned by her husband, referred to as ‘The Bridge’, which has not been lived in for quite some time. The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell is a 2018 Penguin Books publication. The residents of The Bridge are terrified of the figure, but Elsie tries to shrug this off as simple superstition-that is, until she notices the figure's eyes following her.Ī Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, this is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect-much like the silent companions themselves. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure-a silent companion-that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself.

But with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, her new servants resentful, and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her husband's awkward cousin for company. When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting.