The Two Houses

'Superbly written and utterly gripping' Daily Mail After an acclaimed career in ceramics, Jay herself has cracked. Recovering from a breakdown, she and her husband Simon move to the desolate edges of the north of England, where they find and fall in love with the Two Houses: a crumbling property whose central rooms were supposedly so haunted that a previous owner had them cut out from the building entirely. But on uprooting their city life and moving to the sheltered grey village of Hestle, Jay and Simon discover it's not only the Two Houses that seems to be haunted by an obscure past. It becomes increasingly clear that the villagers don't want them there at all - and when building work to make the two houses whole again starts, a discovery is made that will unearth decades-old secrets . . . But who in this village has been hiding them? 'Atmospheric with a wonderful cast of characters that prove the depth of Cooper's empathy and talent. Eerie, evocative and captivating . . . A total triumph.' Tor Udall, author of A Thousand Paper Birds Praise for These Dividing Walls: 'Beautifully written' Prima 'Unforgettable' Hannah Rothschild 'Confident and brilliant' Lisa O'Donnell 'Fine writing . . . Cooper's expertly realised characters, both sympathetic and not, have stories interwoven with aplomb' Daily Mail

Fran Cooper grew up in London before reading English at Cambridge and Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She spent three years in Paris writing a PhD about travelling eighteenth-century artists, and currently works in the curatorial department of a London museum.