Tuesday 5 May 2015

Extract & Giveaway: The Crooked House by Christobel Kent

Following on from the interview with Christobel Kent this morning, I now have an extract from The Crooked House to whet your appetite and a fantastic giveaway for a signed copy of the book. 

One fateful night. One unthinkable family tragedy. One survivor. This is Alison's story.

Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: with no ties and a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. But once Alison was someone else: once she was Esme, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote house on a bleak estuary. A girl whose family, if not happy, exactly, was no unhappier than anyone else's - or so she thought.

Then one night violence was unleashed in the crooked house, in a nightmare that only Alison survived and from which she's been running ever since. Only when she falls for the charismatic Paul does Alison realise that to have any chance of happiness, she must return to her old life and face a closed community full of dark secrets.

As she seeks to uncover the truth of what happened that terrible night, Alison begins to question everything she thought she knew. Is there anyone she can trust?

Thirteen Years Ago

When it starts again she is face down on her bed with her hands over her ears and she feels it more than hears it. A vibration through the mattress, through the flowered duvet, through the damp pillow she’s buried her face in. It comes up from below, through the house’s lower three storeys. BOOM. She feels it in her throat.

Wait, listen: one, two, three. BOOM.

Is this how it begins?

Leaning on the shelf over the desk, wooden letters spelling her name jitter against the wall. They were a present on her seventh birthday, jigsawn by Dad, E.S.M.E. The family’d just moved in, unloading their stuff outside this house they called the crooked house, she and Joe, as the sun went down over the dark marsh inland. Creek House to Crooked House, after the tilt to its roofline, its foundations unsteady in the mud, out on its own in the dusk. Mum was gigantic with the twins, a Zeppelin staggering inside with bags in each hand. We need more space now, is how they told her and Joe they were moving. It was seven years ago, seven plus seven. Now she’s fourteen, nearly. Fourteen next week.

Ah, go on, Gina had said. Just down it. Then, changing tack, You can give it me back, then.

Esme’s been back an hour. She isn’t even sure Joe saw her pass the sitting-room door, jammed back on the sofa and frowning under his headphones: since he hit sixteen he’s stopped looking anyone in the eye. The girls, a two-headed caterpillar in an old sleeping bag on the floor, wriggled back from in front of the TV, twisting to see her. Letty’s lolling head, the pirate gap between Mads’s front teeth as she grins up at her, knowing. She mouths something. Boyfriend. Esme turns her face away and stomps past.

Mum opening the kitchen door a crack, leaning back from the counter to see who it is. Frowning like she can’t place her, she gets like that a lot these days. What are you doing back? Esme doesn’t answer: she is taking the stairs three at a time, raging.

Outside the dark presses on the window, the squat power station stands on the horizon, the church out on the spit that looks no bigger than a shed from here, the village lights distant. Make all the noise you like out here, Dad’s always saying, no one can hear.

Hands over your ears and never tell.

On the bed she lies very still, willing it to go, to leave the house. Whatever it is.

Her hands were already over her ears, before it started. Why? The boom expands in her head and she can’t even remember now. All she knows is, she was standing at the window, now she’s on the bed.

She grapples with detail. She heard a car. There were voices below in the yard and, after, noises downstairs. Something scraping across the floor, a low voice muttering and she didn’t want to deal with it, with his questions; she flung herself down on the bed and the tears began to leak into the pillow. She would have put on her music but she didn’t want him to know she was back.

Now. A sound, a human sound, just barely: a wounded shout, a gasp, trying to climb to a scream that just stops, vanishes. And in the silence after it she hears breathing, heavy and ragged; up through three storeys and a closed door, it is as if the house is breathing. And Esme is off the bed, scrabbling for a place to hide.
BOOM.

On the marsh behind the house there are the remains of an old hut with a little rotted jetty. The tide is beginning to come up, gurgling in its channels, trickling across the mud that stretches inland, flooding the clumps of samphire and marsh grass and the buried timbers. Behind her the house stands crooked in the wind freshening off the estuary.

The lights of the police cars come slowly, bumping down the long track, an ambulance, the cab lit. It is three in the morning but the inky dark is already leaching to grey behind the church on the spit. One of the coldest June nights on record, and it takes them a while to find her. She doesn’t make a sound.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crooked-House-Christobel-Kent/dp/0751556998 

Has this left you wanting to read more?  Thanks to the lovely Kirsteen at Sphere I have a signed copy of The Crooked House to giveaway to a lucky follower.  Enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

50 comments:

  1. This looks stunning. I'd love to win it. Good luck with your blog too!

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  2. A very exciting read, thank you.

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  3. sounds like a really good read

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  4. Sounds really good, thanks for the chance to win it! :)

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  5. Great giveaway - if I win, it'll go to my daughter. Shaz, you amaze me. You're so busy with reading, blog tours, giveaways - and I wish I had a smidgen of your computer know-how. How do you find the time?!

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  6. l love to read and this looks brilliant

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  7. This sounds interesting, would love the opportunity to read it

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  8. This one is definitely on my wishlist.

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  9. I would love to win, please count me in

    kirstyjfox AT yahoo DOT com

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  10. I am certainly intrigued. Thank you.

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  11. Looks like a great read, I love the cover design.

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  12. Wow, this looks good. Even the cover is a definite "pick me up and read my info".

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  13. looks awesome fingers crossed xx

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  14. I would love to read this one.

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  15. I'd truly love to read this book, it sounds very intriguing (Laura Jeffs)

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  16. Intriguing title and plot, looks to be an interesting read.

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  17. I'd love to win this as it is on my list of books to buy! :)

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  18. Looks like it would be a great read

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  19. I would love to read this, it looks great!

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  20. Sounds like an EPIC read!!! Fingers crossed, and thank you for yet another fab giveaway xxxx

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  21. You have wetted my appetite.

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  22. Sounds like a fantastic read!

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  23. Sounds great. Would love to read :)

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  24. This sounds like a great read

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  25. Looks a great read from the excerpt

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  26. Sounds like something I would enjoy reading :)

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  27. just the thing for my cruise next month.

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  28. Looks like a great read, thanks for the chance to win it!

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  29. Definitely on my wishlist!

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  30. Sounds great, fingers crossed for a win

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  31. Looks a great read! fingers crossed x

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