The House of Small Shadows

Catherine Howard has left her London job after being bullied at work, and she is trying to rebuild as an antiques valuer. Her new commission is odd: Red House, an isolated home in the English countryside, holds the belongings of the late M. H. Mason, a taxidermist and puppeteer, and she must catalogue them.

Mason's niece Edith lives there with the maid, Maude. She leads Catherine through the rooms of dolls, puppets and posed animals dressed in costume, some arranged as scenes of war. Both women urge Catherine to stay on at the house.

As the nights pass, footsteps sound in the halls and Catherine glimpses small shadows on the stairs. Her own childhood memories start to return, and they sit uneasily beside what the house is showing her.

The book builds slowly as a gothic haunted house novel, drawing on atmosphere and dread rather than quick scares. It nominated for the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2014, and it keeps the line between a haunted house and a troubled mind unclear. The question that drives it is how much of Red House Catherine can trust, and how much of it is in her head.