The Companion

(Paperback)

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Description

THE COMPANION is a beautiful and powerfully-told story of buried secrets, set between the 1930s and the present day, on the wild Yorkshire moors.

Billy Shaw lives in a palace. Potter's Pleasure Palace, the best entertainment venue in Yorkshire, complete with dancing and swing-boats and picnickers and a roller-skating rink.

Jasper Harper lives in the big house above the valley, with his eccentric mother Edie and Uncle Charles, brother and sister authors who have come from London to write in the seclusion of the moors.

When it is arranged for Billy to become Jasper's companion, Billy arrives to find a wild, peculiar boy in a curiously haphazard household where nothing that's meant is said and the air is thick with secrets. Later, when Charles and Edie are found dead, it is ruled a double suicide, but fictions have become tangled up in facts and it's left to Anna Sallis, almost a century later, to unravel the knots and piece together the truth.

Reviews

An absorbing mystery story, really evocative of the Yorkshire Moors and the mill. I loved the character of Billy Shaw! The story kept me engrossed and flipping the pages right to the end

-- Katherine Webb, bestselling author of The Legacy
The Companion is beautifully written and so evocative of time and place, you can almost hear the roar of the roller skates at Potter's Pleasure Palace as you turn the page. Billy Shaw leaps off the moors into our hearts while Jasper Harper lurks ominously at his shoulder throughout this haunting debut. The strange goings on at High Hob are vividly brought to life by Dunnakey's wonderfully crafted novel. If you thought the Brontes were the most intriguing literary family in Yorkshire, wait until you meet the Harpers. -- Linda Green, author of the No.1 bestseller, While My Eyes Were Closed
Sarah writes with warmth, wit and wisdom AND she makes you want to turn the page. A rare combination. -- John Humphrys
An engaging and totally compelling mystery * Yorkshire Post *
Utterly absorbing...a great Yorkshire tale -- Stephen May
A compelling tale * My Weekly *
Utterly charming, wonderfully creepy and rich with mystery. The Companion is a rare treat. -- CL Taylor, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Escape

Author Bio

When she's not writing fiction, Sarah writes and verifies questions and answers for a variety of TV quiz shows including Mastermind, University Challenge and Pointless. She has an honours degree in History and has previously worked as a librarian, an education officer in a Victorian cemetery and an oral history interviewer.

Sarah has won or been shortlisted in several short story competitions and her work has been published in anthologies and broadcast on Radio 4. In 2014 she won a Northern Writer's Award, from New Writing North after submitting part of The Companion. She lives with her husband and daughter in West Yorkshire on the edge of the Pennine Moors. Follow her on Twitter @SarahDeeWrites