The animals are crossing the Atlantic today, as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publish The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey in North America.
It was just last week that we were celebrating the gorgeous UK publication of this glorious gothic debut, and the US cover and campaign is equally thrilling.
The Animals at Lockwood Manor was selected as a March Indie Next pick and for Winter Spring 2020 Indies Introduce and, more recently, chosen as one to read in CrimeReads and included on the GoodReads list of debuts to discover.
The pre-publication trade reviews have been glowing, with Kirkus Reviews saying: “With more than a few nods to Jane Eyre and Rebecca, this debut novel throws an awkward but stalwart heroine into a decaying house with history and mystery to spare. … A moody exploration of bleak wartime Britain.”
Publisher’s Weekly commented “Healey animates the dusty halls of an old English manor house during Hitler’s bombing blitz in her impassioned if mannered debut. … This will be of interest for fans of revisionist gothic narratives in the vein of Sarah Perry’s Melmoth.”
The Library Journal recommended the debut for fans of “Sarah Perry, and gothic suspense” and CrimeReads called it a “lush historical novel.”
A debut novel for fans of Sarah Perry and Kate Morton: when a young woman is tasked with safeguarding a natural history collection as it is spirited out of London during World War II, she discovers her new manor home is a place of secrets and terror instead of protection.
In August 1939, thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright arrives at Lockwood Manor to oversee a natural history museum collection, whose contents have been taken out of London for safekeeping. She is unprepared for the scale of protecting her charges from party guests, wild animals, the elements, the tyrannical Major Lockwood and Luftwaffe bombs. Most of all, she is unprepared for the beautiful and haunted Lucy Lockwood.
For Lucy, who has spent much of her life cloistered at Lockwood suffering from bad nerves, the arrival of the museum brings with it new freedoms. But it also resurfaces memories of her late mother, and nightmares in which Lucy roams Lockwood hunting for something she has lost.
When the animals appear to move of their own accord, and exhibits go missing, they begin to wonder what exactly it is that they might need protection from. And as the disasters mount up, it is not only Hetty’s future employment that is in danger, but her own sanity too. There’s something, or someone, in the house. Someone stalking her through its darkened corridors . . .
We’re delighted to see this stunning novel reaching readers all around the globe!
