Turn down Slade Alley - narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you're looking
for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle,
no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open.
Enter the sunlit garden of an o
ld house that doesn't quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood,
too large for the space it occupies. A stranger greets you and invites you insid
e. At first, you won't want to leave.
Later, you'll find that you can't. This
unnerving, taut and intricately woven tale by one of our most original and bewi
tching writers begins in 1979 and comes to its turbulent conclusion around Hallo
we'en, 2015. Because every nine years, on the last Saturday of October, a 'guest
' is summoned to Slade House.
But why has that person been chosen, by whom an
d for what purpose? The answers lie waiting in the long attic, at the top of the
stairs ...
