Laura Purcell's House of Splinters is available to preorder now

As featured on the Radio 2 Book Club

Some doors are locked for a reason...

Newly married, newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge.

With her new servants resentful and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie only has her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. For inside her new home lies a locked room, and beyond that door lies a two-hundred-year-old diary and a deeply unsettling painted wooden figure - a Silent Companion - that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself...

`[An] extraordinary, memorable and truly haunting book' Jojo Moyes

`[It] shone, for originality for the sheer quality of the writing, the characters and some masterly chills' Peter James

Readers love The Silent Companions:

'Phenomenal'

'Will stay with you long after you have finished reading'

'Spooky, imaginative, original'

'Couldn't put it down'

'Truly creepy'

'Deserves a place on every bookshelf'