It's Easter 1955 and as Lilia scrapes the ice from the inside of the windows, and the rust from the locks, but there are pasts that lurk with the moths in the folds of the drapes at Sugar Hall that she cannot reach. Mouldering in the English border countryside the red gardens of Sugar Hall hold a secret, and as Britain waits for its last hanging, Lilia and her children must confront a history that has been buried but not forgotten. Based on the stories of the Black Boy that surround Littledean Hall in the Forest of Dean, this is a superbly chilling ghost story from Tiffany Murray.

Tiffany Murray grew up in Wales. Her first novel, Happy Accidents (2005), is the coming-of-age tale of 11-year-old Kate Happy, set on a rural farm on the Welsh-English border, and has drawn comparison with Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. Her second novel, Diamond Star Halo (2010), tells the story of Halo Llewelyn and her unconventional family who run a recording studio in rural Wales. It is a story of first love and rock n' roll and drew comparisons with Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle. Both novels were shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and Guardian critics selected Diamond Star Halo as one of the best of the fiction year, 2010.

About the Author
Tiffany Murray grew up in Wales. She studied at New York University and the University of East Anglia, where she gained her doctorate and taught. Her first novel, Happy Accidents (2005), is the coming-of-age tale of 11-year-old Kate Happy, set on a rural farm on the Welsh-English border, and has drawn comparison with Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. Her second novel, Diamond Star Halo (2010), tells the story of Halo Llewelyn and her unconventional family who run a recording studio in rural Wales. It is a story of first love and rock n' roll and drew comparisons with Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle. Both novels were shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and Guardian critics selected Diamond Star Halo as one of the best of the fiction year, 2010. Murray has had short fiction and non-fiction published in various magazines and collections, and features in national newspapers including The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian. In 2003 she edited with Helon Habila Once upon a time in the Pretext series for Norwich Pen & Inc. She teaches creative writing for adults and schools, at The National Writers' Centre for Wales, and for the Arvon Foundation, and is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glamorgan. Tiffany lives in Wales and Portugal.

Reviews
'A beautiful and haunting book. Tiffany Murray is a wonderful storyteller.' Sarah Winman, author of When God Was a Rabbit 'As darkly tantalising as any enchanted forest, a novel that sees a writer with the lightest of touches take on the deepest of our fears - spellbinding.' Tim Butcher, author of The Trigger 'Sugar Hall is not just a brilliantly effective ghost story. It also pries open a window on to a vanished decade, exploring the long consequences of old sins and the suffering of the exile, the refugee and the powerless. Chillingly empathetic, it's a book that cries out to be read again - and again.' Andrew Taylor, author of The American Boy and The Scent of Death 'A shiveringly good read, Sugar Hall reminds me of the days when I used to read under the bedcovers with a torch, because I simply had to find out what happened next.'Aminatta Forna, author of The Hired Man "Tiffany Murray isn't quite like anyone else writing today. She's a mad geneticist of a writer, specialising in taking narrative elements we think we know and splicing them with the unexpected, giving us Emily Bronte the rock chick (Diamond Star Halo) or Stella Gibbons with a louchely 70s drug habit (Happy Accidents). Sugar Hall lingers in the mind like a half-remembered nightmare and confirms Murray's as an intensely British talent." Patrick Gale (author of Notes from an Exhibition and A Perfectly Good Man) 'Sugar Hall is a dark tale brightly told, beautifully written and thoroughly unsettling.' Emylia Hall, author of The Book of Summers and A Heart Bent Out of Shape 'Tender, troubling and telling, Sugar Hall is a box of delights. With prose delicate as moth scales, Tiffany Murray has written her best book to date, a simply delicious and creepy read,' Jon Gower



Book Information
ISBN 9781781721438
Author Tiffany Murray
Format Hardback
Page Count 198
Imprint Seren
Publisher Poetry Wales Press