True Murder

Yaba Badoe

Eleven-year-old Ajuba, Ghanaian child of a broken home at boarding school in Devon, falls under the spell of Poppy Venus and her glamorous family. If Rumer Godden and Edgar Allan Poe had got together to write 'Brideshead Revisited' the result might have been as sensitive, perceptive and yet completely menacing as 'True Murder': but only 'might' and without the added extra that is all this brilliant author's own work. Highly recommended.

Extract

Even after all these years, I find it hard to describe what happened that night. Although there were only three of us in the house, I became convinced that there were others amongst us. What I lived through was agonisingly real at the time.
Teasing a tassel of Miss Fielding's shawl, using it as a comforter, I heard the house stretching itself and yawning. I heard its breathing, its sighs. And at midnight, counting the chimes of the grandfather clock, I sensed ghosts from the past treading the floorboards outside.

Parallels