Alison Clare
Author of dark imaginings
About Alison Clare
Alison Clare lived many lives in theatre, film, finance, fitness and motherhood, across Australia, the UK, Canada, and the USA, before committing to full-time fiction. She has degrees from Notre Dame Australia and Loyola Marymount University, where she completed a Masters in English (Creative Writing). Her short stories and poems have been published in a number of literary magazines including the Bacopa Literary Review, From Whispers to Roars, Coffin Bell Journal, and Flash Fiction Magazine, and her debut novel, Midnight at Maidenstone Hall, is due to hit book shelves in late 2023.
When Alison is not writing, she shares her time with a winemaker husband, vivacious daughter, and neurotic Border Collie. She is a voracious reader and when her time comes, she will most likely meet her end crushed buried beneath the stacks of books on her bedside table.
Midnight at Maidenstone Hall
In the spring of 1919, a young war veteran assumes the alias of Marsden Fisher and travels to Maidenston Hall, the Yorkshire country residence of the Earl and Countess of Scarborough, to tutor their daughter Alice. Searching for the truth behind the death of his lover, Alice's late brother Simon, Marsden arrives to find that nothing is as he expected it to be; the house has been half destroyed by fire, the family's financial ruin is imminent, only a small core of frightened but loyal servants remains to serve them, and Alice and her twin sister Beatrice are feuding so badly that they cannot be in the same room together. It is clear that the family is hiding a terrible secret and the lies surrounding Simon's death encourage Marsden to fear for his own safety. The longer he stays at Maidenstone, the more he fears the family will discover his true identity and his relationship with Simon, but he cannot leave until he discovers the truth: about Simon, and the terrible screams that echo through the Hall at midnight.
Midnight at Maidenstone Hall will be available from Level Best Books and major retailers in November 2023.
Contact Alison Clare
@aliclarewrites
aliclarewriter@gmail.com