RESULTS

'The farmhouse was called The Beacon and they had been born and reared there, May, Colin, Frank and Berenice, but only May had been left for the last 27 years...' May had been the clever daughter and she had escaped the shelter of The Beacon, just once, to go to university. But in London she had been pursued by nameless terrors, the victim of fears and anxieties. Now she was the spinster daughter, the one who stayed, who nursed her father after his accident and looked after her mother in her old age. Frank was the one who got away. He married and moved on. But why does no one ever mention Frank's name?

In this collection of stories, Susan Hill focuses on those who are lonely or frustrated to convey the small fears and dramas that make everyday life both so normal and so terrifying.

A mysterious depiction of masked revellers at the Venice carnival hangs in the college rooms of Oliver's old professor in Cambridge. On this cold winter's night, its eerie secret is revealed by the ageing don. The dark art of the Venetian scene, instead of imitating life, has the power to entrap it. To stare into the painting is to play dangerously with the unseen demons it hides, and become the victim of its macabre beauty...

A little boy is kidnapped as he stands with his satchel at the gate of his home, waiting for his lift to school. An ex-con finds it impossible to stay straight. A severely disabled young woman dies in the night - has someone who loves her helped her out of this world? Once again, Susan Hill brilliantly creates a community, with detail so sharp and convincing that readers feel that these people are their neighbours. And that terror and evil are always in their midst... The Pure in Heart is the second of Susan Hill's novels set in the English Cathedral town of Lafferton and featuring the enigmatic policeman, Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler.

A lonely woman of 53 vanishes in fog - hidden in her cupboard is an expensive pair of cuff-links with a note: 'To You, with all possible love from your devoted, Me'. A fat 22-year-old never returns from an early morning walk - is her disappearance connected with her girlish crush on Dava, the blue-eyed 'therapist' whose speciality is 'inner harmony'? Experienced policemen know that most missing persons either turn up or go missing on purpose. But fresh young D. S. Freya Graffham won't drop it - until she discovers what links the people who disappear on 'The Hill', young and old, men and women, even a little dog. Susan Hill writes with compassion, humour and a unique understanding of the details of daily life. In Various Haunts of Men, she has created a small cathedral town (within the orbit of a large urban city) and filled it with recognizable characters - the local GPs, the exceedingly dodgy surgeon, the grieving widow who is helped through the ritual of Christmas by her kindly neighbour, the down-to-earth flatmate, the unhappy wife who fills her days with charity work - and the tall blond police officer, Simon, who stands at the centre of an ordinary world.

When Arthur Kipps attends the funeral of Alice Drablow he is unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind her house. It is not until he glimpses a woman dressed all in black at the funeral that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold.

This collection of modern women's short stories ranges from well-established writers such as Carson McCullers and Katherine Mansfield who provide stories of childhood, while contemporary talents such as Helen Dunmore and E. Annie Proulx give rare glimpses into distant worlds.