The Haunting of Thores-Cross: Yorkshire Ghost, Book 1

The ghost of a wronged young woman in the Scottish village of Thores-Cross waits 230 years to have her story told in Perkins’s suspenseful and atmospheric first Yorkshire Ghost novel. In 1988, little Emma Carter finds an inkpot embedded in a stone wall around the town’s infamous haunted house. In 2012, Emma, now a writer, dreams of Jennet Scot, a 15-year-old orphan in 1776. Jennet is seduced, impregnated, and abandoned by wealthy Richard Ramsgill. The villagers buy potions and poultices from her under cover of night, but in public they shun her as a witch. After Jennet’s twins are born dead, she curses the Ramsgill family, Richard’s descendants, and the entire village. Emma realizes that Jennet is possessing her through the inkpot, compelling her to write her tragic story of abuse and injustice. When Emma commits adultery with her neighbor Mark Ramsgill and becomes pregnant with twins, she fears how far Jennet’s possession will go. Chapters alternate between Emma’s and Jennet’s points of view, the latter in well-written Scottish dialect. This gloomy historical ghost story provides page-turning chills and sympathy for scorned women. (BookLife)