While You Sleep

On a remote Scottish island stands the MacBride house, an isolated mansion with a disturbing history, which an American woman decides to rent for a month or two as she seeks refuge from a failing marriage. All the classic tropes of the Gothic psychological thriller are here: a haunted house with strange goingson, tumultuous weather, taciturn and suspicious locals. Nothing, inevitably, is quite as it seems. Fast-paced, psychologically astute and intensely atmospheric, this is a real page-turner that builds to a gripping dénouement, whatever your take on the more fanciful supernatural elements of the story.

Simon Humphreys