How to Mend the Sky

Eden Book Society #1993

by Ivy Liu

After her mother dies, running from grief, Ingrid falls in love with a much older painter. They move together to a cottage in the North of Scotland.

Buried in beech trees and gorse, she tries to forget seeing death distort her mother's face. Winter comes, the cold seeps into the cottage's granite walls, and Ingrid begins to wonder if she made the right choice.

As Christmas approaches, Ingrid's dead mother shows up on her doorstep. She seems solid and is hefting a suitcase with a broken zipper. Ingrid does not know how to explain to her fiance who this woman is. She doesn't know what has brought her mother back, or how to make her stay.

The Eden Book Society was a publishing house that produced horror novelettes for a private list of subscribers. It was established in 1919 by the Eden family, handed down through the generations issuing short horror novels to a confidential list of subscribers. Eden books were always written under pseudonyms and were rumoured to have been written by some of the greatest horror authors of their day, many of whom had strong ties to the mysterious Eden family. Dead Ink is reissuing eight novels from Eden's 1993 archive encompassing psychological torments, vampiric intrigue, visitors from beyond the grave and much more.

Are you brave enough to join the Eden Book Society?

Genres: Horror, Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 2026

Reviews

[Blair]

Grieving her mother, 18-year-old Ingrid makes the ill-judged decision to start a relationship with Alan, a much older artist, and move with him to his cottage in rural Scotland. There, the ghost of Ingrid’s mother appears, impossibly, to stay with the couple. This is a gentle haunting, the story laced with folklore (Alan’s ‘faerie circle’ of paint jars in the woods; a story about his grandmother’s hair being buried on the land), and although a few cultural references tie it to the early 90s, it has a timeless, or rather outside-time, feel to it. The title is taken from a folk tale Ingrid heard in childhood, about a goddess who plugged a hole in the torn-apart sky with her own body. That’s what mothers do, she’s told, but it’s clear this is also a story about Ingrid, who barely knows herself, being torn between the mother who’s always done everything for her and the cruel, domineering partner who’s taken over. Eventually she’ll have to make a choice that doesn’t involve either of them.

(Part of the Eden Book Society 1993 collection)

[Katie]

I am obsessed with these Eden Book Society novellas
This is my favourite so far

[Thomas]

Holy cow. I need to know who this author really is, because I want to read more of her work.

[Hermeowne Blue]

maybe it's time to stop romanticising emotionally unavailable asian mothers and the total lack of (even thinking about) abortion

[Laura Watt]

I liked this novella a lot. It felt so intimate and raw, which made it all the more heartbreaking. Good amount of tension also.

[Brian]

The leather box was worn, and as she opened it slowly, she saw a gold band. No stones, just smooth yellow shine.

‘It was my grandmother’s.’ Alan slipped it onto her finger.

‘Thank you.’ It was too big, loose. Ingrid tried to imagine the woman it had belonged to. The thicker fingers, Alan’s thick lips perhaps, golden hair bleaching to white? And then she swallowed the burble of a laugh. This was the ring that had belonged to the woman whose hair was buried in the woods. She imagined that woman rising up out of the mushrooms and leaf mulch to join her mother in the sitting room.
[122]

[Rebecca]

really gorgeous ghost story. i wept a little.

[dani]

“that is what mothers do. they fix the universe for their kids, using their own bones if they have to”

[Melinda Dinh]

The horror here isn’t her mother’s ghost. The living can be scarier. Left me hanging every time I was putting the book down.

[Rosemary Fisher]

Disappointing

[Sai]

2.5 the mum was interesting