Celia Fremlinová

He was smiling, and covered in blood - face, hands, pyjamas - everything and in his hands - thrust towards her like a birthday gift - was Julie’s teddy-bear, soaked and dripping with blood.This collection of spine-chilling Gothic miniatures from Celia Fremlin (‘Britain’s Patricia Highsmith’ - Sunday Times) is a showcase of macabre domesticity: controlling husbands rub shoulders with manipulative wives, parasitic visitors meet fatal accidents, there are nervous breakdowns, toxic relationships, sinister villagers and mob justice.With an unerring nail, Fremlin picks the scabs concealing domestic fault lines.

I tried to open my mouth to call out again; but it was not my mouth that opened; it was a great beak, jutting out of my face, cruel and curved like a bird of prey ... In the high flats, up near the clouds, Hilda and her baby twins reach a fateful end ... An aunt feels foreboding about her niece's new fiance - but the darkness comes from within ... A haunted babysitter experiences a little girl's terror of The Hen With The Great Big Eyes ... One teenage girl's evening home alone is ruined by a mysterious unexpected visitor ... A little boy's obsession with angels leads to a dramatic metamorphosis ... Celia Fremlin's classic Gothic story collection is a masterpiece of psychological horror, mining the darkest elements of marriage, childhood, and ageing; probing paranoia, grief and toxic relationships; inviting the ghosts of the past into our present; and exploring the nightmarish secret impulses and supernatural forces lurking beneath suburban Britain.