A Thousand Ghosts

Gather round, gather in . . . Chloe, an out of work actress, is a ghost walker - leading ghost tours around the city of York. Trailing down the Shambles and snickelways, past Clifford's Tower, along Micklegate Bar, she performs to her rapt and terrified audience the lives, deaths and ghostly afterlives of figures from the city's storied past as they flicker in and out of sight in shadows and oily darkness. Here is the 'Pearl of York', Margaret Clitheroe, crushed to death under a weighted door on Ouse Bridge. Here is young Eliza, left to sicken alone in the orphanage attic, calling out for her mammy. Here, the Sobbing Woman at Stonegate. And always hovering at Chloe's shoulder is her alter-ego, Mary Bateman, the infamous 'Yorkshire Witch' - abortionist, petty thief, fraudster and poisoner. In A Thousand Ghosts, York's rich and bloody history merges with Chloe's own, as she gradually confronts her own personal spectres - her failed aspirations as an actor; her mother's dementia; and the mystery of a childhood friend who disappeared in the city. Sensual, strange and deeply moving, a novel about the many natures of haunting, A Thousand Ghosts is gothic fiction at its finest.