Proud and solitary, Eel Marsh House surveys the windswept reaches of the salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway. Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral Mrs Alice Drablow, the house's sole inhabitant, unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind the shuttered windows.

Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House, unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind the shuttered windows. The house stands at the end of a causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose.

Review
“Heartstoppingly chilling” Daily Express “An excellent ghost story...magnificently eerie...compulsive reading” Evening Standard “A rattling good yarn, the sort that chills the mind as well as the spine” Guardian “She writes with great power, authentically chilling” Daily Telegraph “One of the most popular British ghost stories of modern times” Observer

Susan Hill's novels and short stories have won the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys awards and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her books are set texts for GCSEs and A-levels. A Kind Man belongs to a genre that she has made her own: literary novellas which are short yet punchy, full of menace and feeling, and which include the critically acclaimed The Beacon and bestselling ghost stories The Woman in Black, The Man in the Picture and The Small Hand. She is also author of the Simon Serrailler crime series, and recently published a bestselling memoir of reading, Howard's End is on the Landing. Susan Hill lives in Gloucestershire, where she runs her own small publishing firm, Long Barn Books.