Beyond Black

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Hilarious and sinister, ‘Beyond Black’ is a tale of dark secrets and secret forces in suburban England. Alison Hart is a medium trade: dead people talk to her, and she talks back. With her flat-eyed, flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, she tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital road, passing on messages from dead ancestors: 'Granny says she likes your new kitchen units.' Alison's ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift. Behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman. She knows that the next life holds terrors that she must conceal from her clients. Her days and nights are haunted the men she knew in her childhood, the thugs and petty criminals who preyed upon her hopeless, addled mother, Emmie. They infiltrate her house, her body and her soul; the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become. ‘Beyond Black’ is a witty and deeply sinister story of dark secrets and forces, set in an England that jumps at its own shadow, a country whose banal self-absorption is shot through fear of the engulfing dark.

COVER: Paperback

CONDITION: Pre-Loved

TYPE OF BOOK: Fiction

SUB-TYPE: Fantasy

ISBN: 9780007157761

LANGUAGE: English

SUGGESTED AGE LEVEL: Adult

AUTHOR'S NAME: Hilary Mantel

NO OF PAGES: 480

PUBLISHER NAME: Published 2005 Harper Perennial