Beyond Black [Paperback]

‘Magnificent…It’s one of the greatest ghost stories in the language, but it’s far more than just a ghost story – it’s a novel of desperate truthfulness – a majestic work, truly.’ Philip Pullman

‘Sparkling, sinister and supremely original.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘As black as a tar barrel and very, very funny.’ The Times

‘Laceratingly observant, a masterpiece of wit, heavy with atmosphere. It is also gloriously insolent and slyly funny: full of robust, uncluttered prose and searing moments.' Independent

‘Pins elusive Middle England to the page in all its creepiness: a place blank and disconnected, yet fatally self-absorbed.’ Rachel Cooke, Observer

‘An elegant, atmospheric tale and a nuanced portrait, full of ironies.’ Tatler

'Chilling, creepy and endlessly inventive.' Kate Saunders, The Times

‘Hilary Mantel has done something extraordinary. She has taken the ethereal halfway house between heaven and hell, between the living and the dead, and nailed it on the page.’ Fay Weldon, Guardian

‘Has the kind of gallows humour that makes you laugh out loud…A real page-turner, a darkly humorous take on the enduring effects of childhood trauma.’ Mslexia

'A deep, disturbing, violently amusing and subversive work.’ Daily Telegraph

A comic yet sinister tale of wicked spirits and suburban mediums from the Booker Prize-winning author of ‘Wolf Hall’ and ‘A Place of Greater Safety’.

Alison Hart, a medium by trade, tours the dormitory towns of London’s orbital ring road with her flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead ancestors. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the next life holds but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who infiltrate her body and home, becoming stronger and nastier the more she resists…

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Hilary Mantel’s supremely suspenseful novel is a masterpiece of dark humour and even darker secrets.

Alison Hart is a medium by 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 by 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.

This tenth novel by Hilary Mantel, the critically acclaimed author of Giving Up the Ghost, is a witty and deeply sinister story of dark secrets and dark forces, set in an England that jumps at its own shadow, a country whose banal self-absorption is shot through by fear of the engulfing dark.

Hilary Mantel is one of our most important living writers. She is the author of twelve books, including ‘A Place of Greater Safety’, ‘Giving Up the Ghost’, ‘Beyond Black’ (shortlisted for the Orange Prize) and, most recently, ‘Wolf Hall’, which won the Man Booker Prize. ‘Bring up the Bodies’, the sequel to ‘Wolf Hall’, is to be published in 2012.