The Child Garden

Catriona McPherson, published by Constable, £9.99 Eden was its name. “An alternative school for happy children,” said the brochure. “A load of hippies running wild in the woods,” said the locals. After a suicide it closed its doors and the children scattered.

Thirty years later, it’s a care home; its grounds neglected and overgrown, its only neighbour Gloria Harkness, who acts as tenant-caretaker in a rundown farmhouse to be close to her son.

Nicky lives in the home, lighting up Gloria’s life and breaking her heart every day. However, Nicky and a ragbag of animals aren’t enough to keep loneliness at bay and when Gloria’s childhood friend and secret sweetheart, Stephen “Stig” Tarrant, turns up at her door one night, all she can see is the boy she knew. She lets him in and he reveals he’s being stalked by an Eden girl, who has goaded him into meeting her at the site of the suicide. Except suddenly, after all these years, the dead are beginning to speak and suicide is not what they say.

A disturbing tale of deception and self-deception set in the Scottish countryside, no less an authority than crime genre doyenne Val McDermid says of the book: “If you like your thrillers twisty and twisted, you’ll love this”. It’s perfect for anyone looking for an unputdownable story with lots of things that go bump in the night.

Catriona McPherson is Scottish-born and bred and moved to California in 2010.