Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark

Spine-chillingly creepy Halloween tales of horror from author of Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Uncle Paul: the 'grandmother of psycho-domestic noir' (Sunday Times) for fans of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith and Stranger Things.

'Few people can chill the blood like Celia Fremlin.' Telegraph

'Grips like grim death.' Spectator

I tried to open my mouth to call out again; but it was not my mouth that opened; it was a great beak, jutting out of my face, cruel and curved like a bird of prey ...

In the high flats, up near the clouds, Hilda and her baby twins reach a fateful end on their new Persian carpet ...

An aunt feels an indefinable foreboding about her niece's new fiance - but the darkness comes from within ...

A haunted babysitter experiences a little girl's terror of The Hen With The Great Big Eyes ...

One teenage girl's evening home alone is ruined by a mysterious unexpected visitor ...

A little boy's obsession with angels leads to a dramatic metamorphosis ...



Celia Fremlin's classic Gothic story collection is a masterpiece of psychological horror, mining the darkest elements of marriage, childhood, and ageing; probing paranoia, grief and toxic relationships; inviting the ghosts of the past into our present; and exploring the nightmarish secret impulses and supernatural aura that lurks beneath suburban Britain.



CELIA FREMLIN (1914-2009) was born in Kent and spent her childhood in Hertfordshire. She then studied at the University of Oxford whilst working as a charwoman. During the Second World War, she served as an air-raid warden before becoming involved with the Mass Observation Project, collaborating on a study of women workers, War Factory. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, moved to Hampstead and had three children. In 1968, their youngest daughter, aged nineteen, took her own life; a month later, her husband did the same. In the wake of these tragedies, Fremlin briefly relocated to Geneva. In 1985, she married Leslie Minchin, with whom she lived until his death in 1999. Over four decades, Fremlin wrote sixteen celebrated novels - including the classic seaside mystery Uncle Paul and Christmas noir The Long Shadow - as well as one book of poetry and three story collections. Her debut, The Hours Before Dawn, won the Edgar Award in 1960.