Description

ALL WILL BE FORGIVEN, IF ALL CAN BE FORGOTTEN.

The dilapidated seaside town of Saltwash isn’t a place that Tom Shift would have chosen to come to at all, let alone on such a bleak November afternoon. But his new friend, Oliver Keele, has insisted on meeting for dinner at the Castle Hotel, where the owners, the Paleys, try their best to cling on to the glory days.

Both terminally ill, Tom and Oliver have been bound by the saddest of circumstances, though they have found some solace in writing to one another via a pen-pal scheme set up by their respective cancer clinics. So far, their friendship has been conducted solely through letters, with Oliver proving himself to be a treasury of literary quips and quotes. Yet, for all his flamboyance and verbosity, he is guarded, and Tom suspects that he is lonely and nomadic. And Oliver sees Tom for what he is too: a man haunted by guilt and desperate to try and atone in some way before it’s too late.
Regret is what brings others to the Castle. Much to Tom’s surprise, dozens more guests appear, dressed in their finest to take part in a prize draw that offers one person the chance of deliverance from their remorse. But does everyone deserve the opportunity?

Publisher Review

PRAISE FOR ANDREW MICHAEL HURLEY’S NOVELS * : * Fascinating and curiously seductive . . . there is a deep sense of darkness * Guardian, on BARROWBECK * Thrilling, unsettling, ominous . . . like a knock at the door on a dark evening * Irish Times, on BARROWBECK * Barrowbeck casts a real spell – or is it a curse? * Mail on Sunday, on BARROWBECK * Impeccable and beautifully drawn . . . Hurley has been rightly lauded in British folk-horror circles * Big Issue, on BARROWBECK * I will confidently predict that no reader will guess where it’s heading . . . Hurley’s ability to create a world that’s like ours in many ways and really not in many others is again on full display * The Times, on STARVE ACRE * Superb . . . Hurley leads you up on to the moors . . . dropping sinister hints at devilment and demonic possession. Then he changes course, scuffs over prints in the snow, springs new villainies on you, and abandons you overnight inthe hills’ * The Times, on DEVIL’S DAY * Full of unnerving horror . . . Amazing — Stephen King, on THE LONEY