Although best known for her historical fiction, Hilary Mantel’s first Booker Prize nomination came with this comically sinister tale of wicked spirits and suburban mediums in a masterpiece of dark humour. Alison Hart, a medium, tours the outskirts of London with her cynical sidekick, Colette, passing on messages from beloved dead relatives to a paying audience. But behind her plump, smiling persona hides a desperate woman: she knows the terrors the afterlife holds, but must conceal them from her wide-eyed clients. At the same time, she is plagued by spirits from her own past, who become nastier the more she resists…

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