The Eleventh Name: a ghost story

Eleven people drowned. The record kept every name but theirs.Mara Voss does not believe in hauntings. She believes in inventories.Hired to catalogue a dead lighthouse keeper's estate on a tidal island off the Devon coast, she arrives with two suitcases, a box of books and a bag of oranges, and sets to work the only way she knows how: room by room, shelf by shelf, writing everything down.The cottage does not care for being measured. A chair stands pulled back from a table in a room sealed for eighteen months. A radio with no power speaks once and stops. The doors swell shut when the tide goes out, which is the wrong way round, and every islander in the harbour shop can talk about the tower for eight minutes without once saying the word.Then Mara finds a biscuit tin under the pantry floor, and an order signed by four men in 1854 instructing the keeper to leave the light dark.Eleven people went down on the reef that November. The inquiry named the ship, the master, and the men who signed. It named none of the dead - and when Mara finally sees the passenger list, one of those eleven names is one she has heard since childhood.A quiet, chilling ghost story about tides, records, and the things families agree not to say.Perfect for readers of Susan Hill, Andrew Michael Hurley and Michelle Paver.