Struggling with money, raising a child alone and fleeing a volatile ex, Jess McMachen accepts a job caring for an elderly patient. Flo Gardner—a disturbed shut-in and invalid. But if Jess can hold this job down, she and her daughter, Izzy, can begin a new life. Flo’s vast home, Nerthus House, may resemble a stately vicarage in an idyllic village, but the labyrinthine interior is a dark, cluttered warren filled with pagan artefacts. And Nerthus House lives in the shadow of a malevolent secret. A sinister enigma determined to reveal itself to Jess and to drive her to the end of her tether. Not only is she stricken by the malign manipulation of the Vicarage’s bleak past, but mercurial Flo is soon casting a baleful influence over young Izzy. What appeared to be a routine job soon becomes a battle for Jess’s sanity and the control of her child. It’s as if an ancient ritual was triggered when Jess crossed the threshold of the vicarage. A rite leading her and Izzy to a terrifying critical mass, where all will be lost or saved. It’s nearly Halloween so it seems appropriate that this week’s review visits the darker side of human…

JUST ANOTHER DEAD-END JOB. DEATH. IT’S A DIRTY BUSINESS. When Diya Burman’s best friend Angie dies, it feels like her own life is falling apart. Wanting a fresh start, she joins Slough & Sons – a family firm that cleans up after the recently deceased. Old love letters. Porcelain dolls. Broken trinkets. Clearing away the remnants of other people’s lives, Diya begins to see things. Horrible things. Things that get harder and harder to write off as merely her grieving imagination. All is not as it seems with the Slough family. Why won’t they speak about their own recent loss? And who is the strange man that keeps turning up at their jobs? If Diya’s not careful, she might just end up getting buried under the family tree. . . Way back in 2020, I read an excellent anthology by Jonathan Sims called 13 Storeys. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everyone loves a haunted house don’t they? Two years down the line and the author is back with a new novel, Family Business. The sadness that inhabits the main protagonist, Diya, feels palpable. The death of her best friend means she has lost one of the few constants in her life….