Bone China

From the award-winning author of The Silent Companions.

'Du Maurier-tastic' GUARDIAN

'Deliciously sinister' HEAT

'A clever, creepy read' SUNDAY EXPRESS

Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken.

But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home.

Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralysed and almost entirely mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try and escape her past, but she soon discovers that her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.

Laura Purcell's next novel, The Shape of Darkness, is coming in January 2021...


Deliciously spooky, Observer

Anyone familiar with Purcell's previous novels will know she's an expert at bone-rattling tension . and Bone China is just as eerie . Written with an atmosphere of real foreboding, this is a sensational late autumn read as the evenings close in, Stylist

Du Maurier-tastic . Purcell has a sure storytelling touch, a command of atmosphere and a keen eye for the telling details of social history. Oh, and she stores up some satisfying and suitably macabre final revelations -- Paraic O’Donnell, Guardian

A Victorian tale replete with laudanum, tuberculosis and possibly fairies . a clever, creepy read, Sunday Express, Best New Thrillers

[Laura Purcell] does creeping menace like no one else. With Bone China, once again, I'm sleeping with the lights on, Red

A brilliantly atmospheric and chilling tale and I raced through the pages hardly daring to find out what would happen next! Laura's characters and the world they inhabit are compelling, unsettling and richly drawn. A fabulous tale! -- Ruth Hogan, author of 'The Keeper of Lost Things'

With a cast of mysterious characters, a beautifully written sense of foreboding, and something malevolent (possibly) lurking around every cover, Bone China is a deliciously sinister and chilling read for fans of superior scary fiction, Heat

If Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë had a love-child, it would be Laura Purcell. Bone China is a deliciously creepy novel full of rambling houses, storm-soaked nights, sinister secrets and hidden agendas that kept me turning the pages -- Lorna Cook, author of 'The Forgotten Village'

So many books are hyped up as being the next Jamaica Inn or the next Rebecca, but Bone China really is, and I think Queen Daphne might have to hand over the crown to Queen Laura. The research was just exquisite ... A cut above anything else I've read this year -- Natasha Pulley, author of 'The Watchmaker of Filigree Street'

I absolutely loved it. Sublime gothic atmosphere, completely gripping story and I honestly didn't expect it to hit me so hard emotionally. It's not just that I couldn't put it down, I just couldn't let go of those characters -- Martyn Waites, author of 'The Old Religion'