This Haunted World Book Three: Highgate

A Truly Haunting Supernatural Thriller

By: Shani Struthers

Narrated by: Sheila Dearden

From Shani Struthers, the best-selling author of The Venetian and The Eleventh Floor, comes the third in the This Haunted World series: Highgate. With sometimes harrowing scenes, this is her darkest novel yet and not for the faint-hearted!

Highgate, perhaps the most famous cemetery in the world, is renowned for its Victorian Gothic splendour, famous residents, its vampire and, of course, ghosts....

Lucy Klein, 42, is not only obsessed with Highgate, she works there too, organising tours for those with an interest in some of the finest Victorian funerary architecture in existence. Single, and on the shy side, she is nonetheless content with her life, or so she thinks. When she meets the enigmatic Zak Harborne, she realizes what she’s been missing and quickly falls in love. Suddenly, it is the business of living that interests her.

1972, and Emma Matthews, a 19-year-old history student, also feels as though she’s on the outside. After visiting a derelict Highgate with a group of friends, she starts to feel a connection, a sense of meaning to her life, amongst the tombstones, the crosses, and the angels. Returning to Highgate over and over, she discovers both a paradise and a garden decidedly more savage.

Grace Derby is just 11 when she encounters the gentleman, tall and with a tall hat, a long black coat and a cape about his shoulders. It is the 1850s and street urchins such as her are not accustomed to kindness from those belonging to the upper echelons. Proffering money for food, for her and her family, he asks nothing in return. Curious about the man with the kind blue eyes, she follows him one day…all the way to Highgate.

For some, it seems, all roads lead to Highgate....

©2019 Shani Struthers (P)2020 Shani Struthers

Heartbreaking

As someone who can walk for hours in a cemetery, that eats up every ghost story imaginable (the more tragic, the better), I rarely put myself into the shoes of the tragic living souls that inspired such haunting tales.

In Highgate, Shani Struthers tells the stories of three desperate, lonely, misfit females who exist to survive each day and hope to find love and acceptance along the way. While their lives span different periods of time, all three are centered around one place, Highgate Cemetery.

Unlike other works written by Struthers, Highgate tells the haunting tales of life, and how cruel humanity can be.

Next time I find myself in a cemetery, I will take a moment of silence for those who rest where I walk, and especially ponder the forgotten ones who didn't have a voice to leave behind.

Sheila Dearden's narration was perfection as usual.