Author: Aiken, Joan

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 24 July 2025 by PAN MACMILLAN (Pan Books) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 464 pages
129 x 197 x 30 | 322g

'Joan Aiken writes superbly, with a force, a colour and strength of imagination that one encounters all too rarely today' – The TelegraphStrong and independent Valhalla Montgomery, a heroine straight out of a Henry James novel, abandons her New York career as a journalist to search for her half-brother in Joan Aiken’s gothic novel, Castle Barebane.

Wishing to escape from her pretentious New York fiancé, Valla is happy to have an excuse to travel to England, only to discover that her half-brother and his wife have disappeared from their London home – leaving their young two children all alone.

Finding Victorian London a gloomy and sinister place, haunted by a series of Ripper style murders, Valla takes the children up to Scotland to a bleak family property known as Castle Barebane. In this Gothic ruin, perched on the edge of a cliff, the mystery surrounding her missing brother only gets darker, and more terrifying . . .

Castle Barebane is an unforgettable tale of love, loss, and human nature is brought to life by Joan Aiken’s vivid story-telling and gripping plot. For fans of gothic mystery, and readers of Virginia Andrews or Nicola Cornick.