Touched

(Paperback)

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A chilling, deeply creepy Hammer novella by Joanna Briscoe, author of the acclaimed, bestselling novel, Sleep With Me. A chilling, deeply creepy Hammer novella by Joanna Briscoe, author of the acclaimed, bestselling novel, Sleep With Me. Rowena Crale and her family have moved from London. They now live in a small English village in a cottage which seems to be resisting all attempts at renovation. Walls ooze damp, stains come through layers of wallpaper, celings sag. And strange noises - voices - emanate from empty rooms. As Rowena struggles with the upheaval of builders while trying to be a dutiful wife and a good mother to her young children, her life starts to disintegrate. And then, one by one, her daughters go missing ...

Reviews

I read it with great delight. A delicious page-turning treat. * Barbara Trapido *
Totally wonderful. Touched makes me mindful of Dylan Thomas, it's so poetic and haunting; Joanna Briscoe is a truly lovely writer * Penny Vincenzi *
a ghost story interwoven with crime, love and horror. It works on every level.Touched is a finely balanced creation, reminiscent of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Briscoes prose is sensuous, poetic, light. The rhythm is delicately controlled. A strange, fascinating tale. * Financial Times *
Touched is a gripping novella, a waking nightmare in the home counties that is both erotic and claustrophobic. There's a woozy atmosphere of menace, a satirical stab at Britain's post-war commuter-belt aspirations, and an elegant, postmodern, cine-literate twistTouched has something of The Turn of the Screw, certainly, but with it, the brasher influence of Ira Levin, or Anthony Shaffer, screenwriter of The Wicker Man. This is a haunting and disquieting parable * Guardian *
that sense of suffocation and slowly creeping madness is something that Touched - the latest novella from the Hammer horror imprint - expertly mines * Daily Mail *

Author Bio

Joanna Briscoe is the author of Mothers and Other Lovers, Skin, You and the highly acclaimed Sleep With Me which was published in eleven countries and adapted for ITV drama by Andrew Davies. She spent her very early years in 'the village of the damned', Letchmore Heath in Hertfordshire, the location for the celebrated 1960 film based on John Wyndham's novel The Midwich Cuckoos - and the inspiration, too, for this Hammer novella.