The Sleep Room: A haunting twisted tale for fans of Catriona W...

As haunting as Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black and as dark as James Herbert's The Secret of Crickley Hall, F. R. Tallis’s The Sleep Room is where your nightmares begin. From the author of the Vienna Blood series. When promising psychiatrist, James Richardson, is offered the job opportunity of a lifetime, he is thrilled. Setting off to take up his post at Wyldehope Hall in deepest Suffolk, Richardson doesn’t look back. One of his tasks is to manage a controversial project – a pioneering therapy in which extremely disturbed patients are kept asleep for months. As Richardson settles into his new life, he begins to sense something uncanny about the sleeping patients – six women, forsaken by society. Why is the trainee nurse so on edge when she spends nights alone with them? And what can it mean when all the sleepers start dreaming at the same time? It's not long before Richardson finds himself questioning everything he knows about the human mind as he attempts to uncover the shocking secrets of The Sleep Room . .

From Booklist

For psychiatrist James Richardson, working for the renowned Dr. Hugh Maitland at Wyldehope Hall in Suffolk in the 1950s is a rare professional opportunity that is bound to enhance his future prospects. But his sense of foreboding begins to grow in the remote setting, particularly surrounding the sleep room, Maitland’s controversial project in which six severely mentally ill women are treated by being kept asleep for months on end. As Richardson adjusts to his duties and establishes a romantic relationship with nurse Jane Turner, unexplained events, seemingly caused by a poltergeist, puzzle him and frighten a staff member and male patient, with disastrous consequences. At the same time, he observes that the dreams of the sleeping women are becoming synchronized, a situation that ultimately leads to tragedy. Clinical-psychologist Tallis, author of the Max Liebermann mysteries set in Freud’s Vienna (written under the name of Frank Tallis), explores the mysteries of the human mind and the nature of reality so skillfully that his final twist can be easily accepted in this novel of psychological suspense that’s firmly grounded in fact. --Michele Leber

the sort of vast, dread edifice we sometimes build around ourselves when the lights go out.” - The New York Times Book Review

“Cleve and spooky. For Tallis, the darker recesses of the mind hold monsters enough. The novel is an elegantly constructed psychiatric Gothic, all spires and gargoyles and ghostly echoes

About the Author

F. R. Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. Between 1999 and 2012, he has received or been nominated for numerous awards, including the New London Writers’ Award, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Elle Prix de Letrice, the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger Award, and two Edgar Allen Poe Awards. His critically acclaimed Liebermann series (written as Frank Tallis) has been translated into fourteen languages and optioned for TV adaptation.

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