
ABOUT THIS BOOK
PUBLISHER: Sphere
ISBN: 9781408724637
RRP: £16.99
PAGES: 320
PUBLICATION DATE:
September 25, 2025
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Hawthorn
By Elaine Thomson
Caithness, October 1871.
The Ordnance Survey are charting Scotland’s most remote north-easterly county, a bleak landscape of endless moorland and lonely crofts. When a strange vision leads cartographer Robert Sutherland out onto the moor, an accident leaves him inches from death. He is taken to Leask House, to recuperate under the care of Mrs Sinclair and her beautiful daughter Isabel.
At first, Robert thinks the dreadful visions that plague him at Leask House are the result of the laudanum he has been prescribed. But as events take ever stranger and more terrifying turns, Robert begins to wonder whether his presence at Leask House is really a coincidence at all.
Someone – or something – has summoned him here.
And they don’t intend for him to leave.
Reviews of Hawthorn
'I was so impressed by Hawthorn' MICHELLE PAVER, author of Dark Matter
'Delightfully brooding and gloriously gothic, Hawthorn sucked me in like the deepest bog, refusing to let me go' CJ COOKE, author of The Book of Witching
'Reminded me of The Little Stranger . . . a hugely entertaining and evocative treat' BRIDGET COLLINS, author of The Binding
'A new classic' SARA SHERIDAN, author of The Fair Botanists
Elaine Thomson
Elaine Thomson is a Scottish author, who has written several historical novels under the name E. S. Thomson. Her work has been longlisted for the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger, and shortlisted for the Saltire Prize, the Scottish Arts Council First Book Award and the William McIlvanney Crime Book of the Year Award. Hawthorn is the first in a planned quartet of ghost stories, all set in Scotland during the four ‘turning points’ of the year: Samhain, midwinter, midsummer and the spring equinox.
Elaine has a PhD in the social history of medicine, and works as a university lecturer by day, and writes by night. She lives in Edinburgh with her two sons.