The Mist in the Mirror

Dec 19, 2025 11:35 PM

Author:Susan Hill

A terrifying ghost story by the bestselling author of The Woman in Black.

One dark and rainy night, Sir James Monmouth returns to London after years spent travelling alone.

Intent on uncovering the secrets of his childhood hero, the mysterious Conrad Vane, he begins to investigate Vane’s life, but he finds himself warned off at every turn.

Before long he realises he is being followed too. A pale, thin boy is haunting his every step but every time he tries to confront the boy he disappears. And what of the chilling scream and desperate sobbing only he can hear?

His quest leads him eventually to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, where he discovers something far more terrible at work than he could ever have imagined.

‘Thoroughly frightening’ Daily Telegraph

‘Chills the blood’ The Times

Reviews

A subtle and captivating fiction

—— The Times

An extraordinary work whose achievements are almost Wagnerian in scale

—— Daily Mail

A thoroughly engrossing read... A.N. Wilson offers a plethora of fascinating ideas on politics, philosophy and, above all, the music of Wagner... Winnie and Wolf vividly brings to life a place, a time and an extraordinary family

—— Mail on Sunday

Deeply clever and gripping... Vividly presented and immaculately researched

—— Spectator

Winnie and Wolf tells a convincing story; it is an emotionally fraught account of German Kultur at war and peace... A.N. Wilson's art is to create a richly chromatic drama of a Romantic Germany, darkened by the atonal experiments of Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Leverkühn, and the murderous ideas of Wolf

—— Times Literary Supplement

A bold, ambitious piece of fiction

—— Terry Eagleton , Guardian

This novel should carry a warning: its appeal will be greatest for fans either of Wagner and European history, or of politics and philosophy

—— Sunday Times

What Nazism owed to the British Empire fascinates Wilson, and his invention of Hitler's Americanised offspring invites us to relive the macabre history while acknowledging our own uncomfortable complicity in it... Bravely ambitious

—— Independent

Winnie and Wolf is a novel rich in philosophical reference - Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, thorny as you like - and ruminative pleasures

—— Evening Standard

Wilson's achievement is startling... Most contemporary English fiction looks rather etiolated and pointless by comparison

—— Hywel Williams , Guardian

It would be hard to name a more ambitious recent work of fiction... Wilson brilliantly evokes Wagner's music

—— Financial Times

Wilson has done his research impeccably and he writes superbly well

—— Literary Review

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