the Luck of Town

Never republished since its first edition in 1922, this is a lost gem of twentieth-century supernatural fiction, and foregrounds the exciting work of an overlooked author.Fox's offbeat but effective prose was championed by China Mieville as part of his reason for choosing Fox's novel Ape's Face as one of his six favourite books in The Week (2016). Much more than a ghost story... One might say that Fox is haunted by the spirit of the place and time of which she writes, and she is able to reproduce in a remarkable way that sense of foreboding and mystery that all of us have experienced." The Argus Where once a Romano-British settlement sprawled across the hills in the north of England, there lies a modern town. Caught in a tense struggle between the growth of the university and industrial expansion, its fate veers towards the uncanny when a discovery is made beneath the old town hall. Into the possession of the university comes the skeleton of a woman, found buried along with a mysterious tablet bearing a cryptic message, and as the ratcheting tension between the townspeople is compounded by an unseasonal heat and sightings of a shadowlike figure haunting the streets, the vengeful grip of a long-buried curse pushes the town towards a night of flames and carnage.

Pagina's: 256, Paperback, British Library Publishing- IWUK