Last Thursday, 6th August, Elizabeth Brooks’ second novel The Whispering House was published in hardback and ebook by Doubleday. The Whispering House is a taut and atmospheric about a young woman’s grief, her search for answers and the beguiling but crumbling house that she feels drawn to. Elizabeth has written a frank and beautiful opinion piece for BookBrunch about the The Whispering House and the often complicated answer to the question, “Where did you get the inspiration for your novel?”. You can read her piece here.

Freya Lyell is struggling to move on from her sister Stella’s suicide five years ago. Visiting the bewitching Byrne Hall, only a few miles from the scene of the tragedy, she discovers a portrait of Stella – a portrait she had no idea existed, in a house Stella never set foot in. Or so she thought.

Driven to find out more about her sister’s secrets, Freya is drawn into the world of Byrne Hall and its owners: charismatic artist Cory and his sinister, watchful mother. But as Freya’s relationship with Cory crosses the line into obsession, the darkness behind the locked doors of Byrne Hall threatens to spill out.

Elizabeth Brooks grew up in a book-loving, story-telling family in Chester. Ever since visiting Haworth Parsonage at the age of 13 she has wanted to be a novelist, and has written numerous opening paragraphs in her time (ruining many a pristine notebook in the process).

Between 1998 and 2001 she read Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. On graduating, she married and moved to the Isle of Man, where she still lives with her husband and two children. Over the years she has plugged away at her writing, finally managing to get beyond the first few hundred words in order to complete her first novel Call of the Curlew.

Her hobbies include painting, playing the violin (lurking at the back of the second violins in the Isle of Man Symphony Orchestra and miming the difficult bits) and most of all reading – preferably novels with a hint of the gothic.