The Hiding Place

An unsettling, supernatural tour de force ... with a back story steeped in local history and plot teeming with everyday anxieties, Amanda Mason has created a new gothic myth. Home for a family party, Nell decides it's time for a proper holiday with new hubby and step-daughter Maude. But the house they rent is, well, unwelcoming, with marks carved on ancient beams, ghostly footsteps, drifting smells and sinister secrets buried behind panels. As poison from the past seeps into the fractures within Nell's new family, personal histories and past horrors entwine to trap the reader in a claustrophobic, terrifying embrace. * Daily Mail * There's nothing like a haunted house to get the heart racing and this deliciously dark contemporary gothic tale set in Whitby will do just that. This gothic tale about mothers and daughters explores the lengths people will go to, to obtain power and control. Hugely atmospheric the writer builds the tension gradually - unsettling and creepy, it's a perfect supernatural read for Halloween. * My Weekly * A masterful, unnerving thriller. * Woman's Own * Haunting and atmospheric, The Hiding Place lingers in the dark spaces of a home as Amanda Mason deftly crafts a steady, creeping tension. As the Elder House's secrets are revealed, Mason shines a brilliant light on the unsettling extents of desire. * A.J. Gnuse, author of The Girl in the Walls * he Hiding Place has everything; chills that build, an immersive setting and a wonderful clash between the present and the past, the living and the dead. At the heart of this haunting novel are characters so real and compelling their stories continue to resonate long after reading. * Jess Kidd * The Hiding Place is the perfect modern ghost story--evocative, unsettling and genuinely spine-tingling. With vividly realised characters and a chilling mystery at its heart, I truly couldn't put it down--and the atmospheric, immersive world Amanda Mason has created stayed with me long after I'd turned the final page. * Katie Lowe, author of The Furies * Full of intrigue, with hidden agendas, lingering resentments & thwarted desires, this sinister tale is dripping with an insidious malice that is sure to leave readers unsettled. * Anita Frank, author of The Lost Ones * Satisfyingly unsettling, this is a hugely atmospheric novel that oozes with uncanny menace. * Anita Frank, author of The Lost Ones * A really convincing ghost story. Elder House, like Shirley Jackson's Hill House, evoked a chilling and eerie sense of past mystery and unhappiness. I was completely pulled along by the narrative and read it in a fevered rush. * Zoe Somerville, author of The Night of the Flood * A gripping and readable novel, full of subtle characterisation, an acute sense of atmosphere and place, and narrative tension. The Hiding Place is an accomplished modern-gothic haunted-house story, elevated by its exploration of the threads which link mothers and daughters (and step-daughters), the secrets they share (and also hide from each other), and women's wishes and desires, and what they will do to achieve them. * The Countryman *

Amanda Mason was born and brought up in Whitby, North Yorkshire. She studied Theatre at Dartington College of Arts, where she began writing by devising and directing plays. After a few years of earning a very irregular living in lots of odd jobs, including performing in a comedy street magic act, she became a teacher and has worked in the UK, Italy, Spain, and Germany. She now lives in York and has given up teaching for writing. Her short stories have been published in several anthologies. The Wayward Girls, her debut novel, was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers prize.