Hazardous Spirits
In 1920s Edinburgh, Scotland, Evelyn Hazard is a young, middle-class housewife living the life she's always expected--until her husband, Robert, upends everything with a startling announcement: he can communicate with the dead.
The couple is pulled into the spiritualist movement--a religious society of mediums and psychics that emerged following the mass deaths of the Spanish flu and First World War--and Evelyn's carefully composed world begins to unravel. And when long-held secrets from her past threaten to come to the surface, presenting her with the prospect of losing all she holds dear, Evelyn finds herself unable to avoid the question: is the man she loves a fraud, a madman, or--most frighteningly--is he telling the truth?
Cloaked in the moody, beguiling backdrop of twentieth-century Scotland, Anbara Salam's Hazardous Spirits brings a sparkling sense of period detail and dry humor to the life of a young woman whose world is unsettled by mediums and spirits, revealing the devastating secrets that ghosts from the past can tell when given the voice to do so.
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Anbara Salam is half-Palestinian and half-Scottish, and grew up in London. She is the author of Things Bright and Beautiful and Belladonna. She has a PhD in Theology and lives in Oxford, England.
Equal parts lush Gothic mystery and delicately-wrought 1920's domestic drama, Hazardous Spirits is a riveting exploration of the unknowable--whether it's ghosts, spirits, or the people we love most.--Tara Isabella Burton, author of The World Cannot Give
A darkly sparkling jewel of a book: haunting, vivid and stuffed full of secrets.--Kirsty Logan, author of Now She is Witch
Atmospheric. . . . a believable portrait of the 1920s spiritualism scene. Historical fiction fans will savor this.-- "Publishers Weekly"
[A] brooding gothic novel. . . . This darkly atmospheric tale asks where the line between charity and deceit lies in a society haunted by those gone too soon.-- "Booklist"
Charming, evocative and very well researched. . . . If you need me, I will be reading this in bed with a flashlight.-- "CrimeReads"
Unnerving, dark, and rich, Hazardous Spirits is a novel full of heart and strangeness.--Nell Stevens author of Briefly, A Delicious Life
With the literary lyricism and precise historical detail of a Sarah Waters novel. . . . Salam injects a wry humor into this tale of secrets, lies, and the power of the ghosts of our pasts.-- "Entertainment Weekly, A Best Book of Fall"
A moving exploration of collective grief and wryly funny. Readers of gothic mysteries, historical fiction, and domestic drama will all find satisfaction within Salam's atmospheric, layered world.-- "Library Journal"
Glittering. . . . intoxicating.-- "Foreword Reviews"
