It's been four years since the events of Long Lankin, which are mentioned often and reverberate strongly here. Their lives end, inevitably, in violence and tragedy, but because this is a supernatural tale, that is where the rest of the story begins.įour centuries later, it's 1962, and sisters Cora and Mimi Drumm have returned to the rural English village of Bryers Guerdon and their ancestral home of Guerdon Hall. The novel doesn't flinch from portraying the brutality Aphra and her companion Lankin face as poor outcasts in a superstitious society.

Still, readers unfamiliar with Long Lankin won't find themselves lost, as Barraclough tells this story of Aphra's life with vivid historical detail. The novel opens in 1567 with a familiar character for those who have read the first book: Aphra Rushes, companion to Long Lankin, and the witch responsible for the powerful curse that has plagued the Guerdon family for centuries. Like its predecessor, The Mark of Cain is a spooky, often terrifying story steeped so deeply in the ominous feeling of a singular place that the richness of the setting carries it along even when a sluggish pace and rotating points-of-view threaten to derail it. Lindsey Barraclough's sequel to her 2011 debut, Long Lankin, returns to the oppressive walls of Guerdon Hall both 400 years before and four years later for a second gloomy, atmospheric horror tale.

Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough