Sally Spedding
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First British Edition Macmillan (2002) |
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Paperback - Pan (2003) |
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Cloven
Little has changed in the picturesque village of Cold Firton, where evil has thrived unhindered for centuries. Even the sheltering forest colludes with the noose and the `bone fire’, so whoever enters its dark domain risks becoming changed for ever.
In February 1830, on his father’s orders, surly Tomos Richards is reluctantly escorting his 14-year-old mute and crippled sister Sian, along with a cattle drove, from Cardiganshire south towards London, hoping to find there a cure for the injuries she sustained when trampled by his herd three years earlier.
From the outset, their journey is beset by danger and treachery, yet still Sian dreams of singing again, and even one day being married to her childhood sweetheart. After much of the drove is lost in a bog, Sian seizes her chance to escape from her increasingly violent brother. Then alone save for her pony and her loyal dog, and desperate to return home to Wales, Sian mistakenly arrives at Tripp’s Cottage in Nether Wapford, in the south of Northamptonshire, where cholera has just taken hold and strangers are viewed with deep suspicion.
Moving to the present day, Ivan Browning, a 32-year-old pottery teacher, has escaped a tragedy in London to settle in the same Tripp’s Cottage. Now, as a foo-tand-mouth epidemic begins, he experiences insistent ghostly pleas for help. But when, in desperation, he begins to investigate his cottage’s history, he finds himself the unwitting target of local criminal gangs.
And finally solving the gruesome mystery of the cottage and its former inhabitants will precipitate a terrifying climax, while the trees that loom all around scream for vengeance into the night.
'Sally Spedding is a font of creepy stories, the kind of tales which wheedle their way back into your mind, hours maybe days and weeks later…' Western Mail
| Paperback - Pan (2002) |
 |
|
First British Edition Macmillan (2001) |
|
Wringland
Wringland Is A Place Of Snares
Abbie Parker is just starting her new job as sales negotiator for a prestige housing development in sinister and vaporous Black Fen - rumoured to be the most haunted corner of England. One morning she arrives to find her office door ajar, and a strangely dressed woman waiting inside, intent on laying claim to just one particular building plot.
As the days go by, Abbie has further strange experiences both on the construction site itself and in the surrounding wet-lands. She must cope not only with the unwelcome attentions of a weird local clergyman and the erratic behaviour of her boyfriend Simon, who’s visiting, but also with a hazy sense that she is now somehow in conflict with the vengeful spirit of a woman betrayed over a century earlier.
After the terror of risking her life by befriending the cleric’s disturbed little daughter, Abbie finally enjoys a brief period of happiness with Simon. But can their mere human love and courage prove sufficient - as both are drawn deeper into the profoundest evil?
Set in mysterious fen country, amongst its concealing mists and treacherous tides, Wringland is a chilling and disturbing sortie into that twilight world that hovers between-reality and nightmare…
`A fine, evocative and haunting first novel . . . a contemporary ghost story to keep your heart pumping’ SFX Magazine
`A subtle chiller which slowly ramps up the tension’ Starburst
`This is a ghost story handled with real assurance’ Good Book Guide
About The Author
Sally Spedding was born in Wales and trained in sculpture. She is still a practising and exhibiting artist. However, having won the Nottingham Festival’s International Short Story Competition, she was approached by an agent to write her first novel, The Fold, about a nightmare school journey to the Pyrenees. This narrowly missed being published, and when the agent no longer handled fiction, Sally continued writing whilst full time teaching and produced seven further novels - mostly thrillers set in France. A dangerous country, she feels, full of unfinished business, even though she has a house in Roussillon.
Sally’s poetry and short stories have been widely published and won many awards including the H E Bates Prize for short story, the Ann Tibble Award for poetry and the Forward Press Top 100 Poet with a prize of £3,000. With a new agent, Judith Murdoch, she was offered a two-book deal with Macmillan and Wringland her crime mystery set on the Fens was published in hardback on September 21st 1991. Her next novel Cloven, is published in September 2002.
Sally has been Workshop editor for Poetry Now Magazine and a speaker and tutor at the Annual Writers’ Conference in Winchester. She is currently working on an urban crime thriller and is Creative Writing tutor for the University of Leicester.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
Cloven
(Macmillan,
2002)
Pbk Sep 03
Wringland
(Macmillan,
2001)
Pan Pbk Sep 02
Cloven
by Sally Spedding
