A Cold Season: The Chilling Richard and Judy Bestseller! (The...

How far would you go to save your child? A nail-biting thriller, 'perfect reading for a dark winter's night' (Richard and Judy).Cass's husband is missing, presumed dead in Afghanistan. Floored by grief, Cass is left alone to take care of her son, Ben, who has been traumatised by his father's death. So when a renovated mill becomes available in the remote Lancashire village of Darnshaw, Cass decides it will be the perfect place for her family to heal. But it quickly becomes clear that outsiders are not welcome in the village, and Ben is displaying a hostility Cass can't understand. As darker events unfold, Cass starts to question her son's sanity. Then a blizzard blows in and Darnshaw is marooned in a sea of snow.Threatened on all sides, Cass finds herself pitted against forces she can barely comprehend.A broken family. A dark secret. The cold season has begun . . .

From Booklist

Once you open the pages of Littlewood’s debut novel, the hairs on the back of your neck are not safe. This classic supernatural story with gothic undertones opens with Cass and her son, Ben, leaving behind the tragedy of losing a husband and father for a place Cass remembers fondly from childhood. Once they arrive in Darnshaw, Cass soon realizes it is no longer the idyllic town she remembers. The apartment building she rented, which looked cozy and populated from the brochure, is only partially finished, and they appear to be its only inhabitants. Then a winter storm knocks out phones, electricity, and Internet, and Cass’ nightmares begin. Ben’s moods start to become more volatile and explosive. Theodore Remick, the charming headmaster of her son’s school, appears to provide a needed respite, but as winter wears on, she realizes he has an agenda of his own. Littlewood’s story isn’t perfect, and some themes are overdone, but it certainly hits some very high and scary notes. --Alison Downs

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

She swallowed her panic, trying not to think of worst-case scenarios: if Ben had gone outside she might never find him. She brushed away the image of the millpond that came into her mind, inky-black water beneath an acid-green coating. No. Cass jumped down the last few steps and her ankle gave, but she recovered and kept going. She went to the entrance and pressed up against the glass. Light spilled onto the snow outside, turning footprints into deep black arcs. Cass grabbed the handle and had started to turn it when the light behind her went out. She stopped. Think. She waved a hand, triggering the lights. The footprints reappeared. She recognized Ben’s, but her own prints were there too, facing in both directions, crisscrossing. Ben’s could have been from this morning, earlier today, even yesterday. But the lights—the lights at her back had already been on when she came down the stairs. The lights went out again. She turned. The ground-floor hall was dark now, but it felt present somehow. Had the lights really been on when she came down? She wasn’t sure, but she thought they probably had been. It felt as though they had. She mouthed his name as she headed away from the front door. The hall lights came on with a low buzz, but just before they did, she saw a pale moonlit glow coming through one of the doorways: the empty apartment. Apartment 6. That must be where Ben had gone. Cass took a deep breath and padded softly along the hall to the apartment that lay beneath her own. The door was open, and when she looked in she saw Ben at once. He was sitting motionless on the floor, muttering something over and over. It made her think of an elderly person trying to remember something long forgotten. Ben didn’t turn around as she stepped toward him. The light was dim, the air granular, and Cass’s ears rang. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. “Ben,” she said, but her voice cracked. She cleared her throat, took a step closer. And then she froze.

About the Author

Alison Littlewood was raised in Penistone, South Yorkshire, and went on to attend the University of Northumbria at Newcastle (now Northumbria University). Originally she planned to study graphic design 'but missed the words too much' and switched to a joint English and History degree. She followed a career in marketing before developing her love of writing fiction.She now lives near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, with her partner Fergus.

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