The Grange

Clavering Grange #1

by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Clavering Grange is ghost-ridden: a red-haired boy wanders the halls, plaintively asking to go home; an old soldier stalks the corridors, sword drawn, eyes gleaming with unholy glee. Where they walk, death and disaster follow.

The Grange's evil twists the souls of all who reside there: the master of the house is given to murderous rages and mysterious disappearances. His sister must be locked in her room each night -- to keep the horrors of the Grange out, or the keep a demonically possessed woman in?

Miles Harrington, newly employed as estate manager, must plumb the depths of the Clavering Grange's evil and face its ghosts. But that evil is more ancient than the keep's crumbling stone walls, and far stronger. Can one man stand against it?

Genres: Horror, Fiction

249 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1988

About the author

Ronald Henry Glynn Chetwynd-Hayes aka Angus Campbell.

Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes was an author, best known for his ghost stories. His first published work was the science fiction novel The Man From The Bomb in 1959. He went on to publish many collections and ten other novels including The Grange, The Haunted Grange, And Love Survived and The Curse of the Snake God. He also edited over 20 anthologies. Several of his short works were adapted into anthology style movies in the United Kingdom, including The Monster Club and From Beyond the Grave. Chetwynd-Hayes' book The Monster Club contains references to a film-maker called Vinke Rocnnor, an anagram of Kevin Connor, the director of From Beyond the Grave.

He won the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement for 1988, and the British Fantasy Society Special Award in 1989.

Reviews

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the England of 1590, R. Chetwynd-Hayes's novel The Grange was published in 1985. Aside from a few sweaty sex passages, it could pass as a product of 1885. It proudly wears its patriotism, dash, and celebration of heroism. It makes a knight of a nobleman's bastard son, who thwarts a plot against Queen Elizabeth I, and introduces a noble house with a series of specters old and more recent, including the shade of a former sovereign. Chetwynd-Hayes excels at the heroic old-timey diction found in historical novels by Stevenson, Buchan, Sabatini, and Patrick O'Brian. It's a contagious brand of rhetoric, and hard to shake after finishing the book in a single four-hour stretch.

[Daniel Stainback · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Elizabethan drama with a tiny dash of the supernatural, this well written, and interesting, book was not what I was expecting going in but I found myself enjoying the ride anyway. The dialogue was exquisite, such polite rudeness.

Despite my high rating, I don't know if this is the type of book to reread years from now.

[Lisa of LaCreeperie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice surprise!

[Megan]

Not so much horror as political intrigue, I think, and even that was fairly simple. The poor ghosts had almost nothing to do!