[Inspector Henry Beaumont 02] • Samain

From the moment he walks into Marchsteam, Henry Beaumont knows it is no ordinary village…

He has inherited a mysterious house left by his late Aunt, who he has never met.

The village is steeped in history and dark secrets, all of which linger in the hidden network of ancient trackways.

The eccentric array of inhabitants are no better – haunted by their pasts, plagued by long-lost disappearances and obsessed with the village’s history, they only make Henry even more suspicious.

Upon his arrival in the village, Henry spies a solitary woman crossing the common – a figure who looks out of place and time.

A woman, it would seem, that no-one appears to have any knowledge of...

The circumstances become even stranger, as Henry becomes woven into a curious pattern of events.

It's not long before he realises that there is far more going on in the seemingly quiet village of Marchsteam than meets the eye.

The date on the calendar draws ever closer to October 31st – a night better known amongst the pagans as Samain.

The night when the dead walk amongst the living.

The mystery deepens, as he discovers his late Aunt was supposedly involved in witchcraft, and that the old man living in the sinister house that the end of the village is obsessed with finding his missing niece.

Are the two connected in some way?

When the night of October 31st finally arrives, all the clocks in Henry’s house stop at midnight.

And he suddenly realises that there’s no getting out now.

He must figure out the truth, no matter what the cost…

Samain is a thoroughly gripping thriller, full of dark twists and turns that will keep you guessing with each new page.

Meg Elizabeth Atkins has won many plaudits for her fiction on both sides of the Atlantic, and reviewers have compared her to Elizabeth Bowen and Barbara Pym for the elegance of her writing. In several of her earlier novels, such as Palimpsest and Tangle, she has explored the disturbing undercurrents beneath the polite surface of English middle-class life, and in Cruel as the Grave forces erupt through the repression and containment of daily existence with violent consequences.

Meg Elizabeth Atkins lives with her husband in a North Yorkshire village. She teaches creative writing and also writes non-fiction books such as Haunted Warwickshire.