{"id":1428,"date":"2013-04-22T13:08:40","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T12:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salibblog.wordpress.com\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2013-04-22T13:08:40","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T12:08:40","slug":"the-dead-of-winter-by-chris-priestley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/2013\/04\/22\/the-dead-of-winter-by-chris-priestley\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you are into the classic ghost story then Chris Priestley&#8217;s <em>The Dead of Winter<\/em> is the one for you.<\/p>\n<p>Michael&#8217;s mother has died and he finds himself being sent to Hawton Mere, a moated house surrounded by marshes. He has become the ward of Sir Stephen Clarendon whose life was saved by Michael&#8217;s father, and his sister Charlotte. Michael resents this as his father had lost his life saving Sir Stephen. The house is old and along with it appears to be a ghost and strange eery noise, which only Michael appears to be able to see or hear. TO escape the unravelling horrors, Michael finds comfort in the old library.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The library contained more books than I think I had ever seen in one place. I had discovered my enjoyment of reading during my mother&#8217;s illness. Before that I had never really understood the appeal &#8211; or indeed the purpose &#8211; of reading for pleasure, but I now found that I could spend hours with no other diversion than the solitary exercise of reading a book, and by the vehicle of those pages would be transported to faraway lands on fantastic adventures. More and more this love of reading had become a medicine and tonic for my troubled heart and mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The easy going style belies the underlying horrors that appear to await Michael. It has echoes of Susan Hill&#8217;s <em>Woman in Black<\/em> &#8211; the same isolated location and an apparent malign spirit, which would be a good follow on book if you want to do some more challenging reading along the same theme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you are into the classic ghost story then Chris Priestley&#8217;s The Dead of Winter is the one for you. Michael&#8217;s mother has died and he finds himself being sent to Hawton Mere, a moated house surrounded by marshes. He &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/2013\/04\/22\/the-dead-of-winter-by-chris-priestley\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/or\/stromnessacademylibrary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}