The Broken Hours

In the spring of 1936, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is broke, living alone in a creaky old house and deathly ill. At the edge of a nervous breakdown, he hires a personal assistant, Arthor Crandle. As the novel opens, Crandle arrives at Lovecraft’s home with no knowledge of the writer or his work but is soon drawn into his distinctly unnerving world: the malevolent presence that hovers on the landing; the ever-shining light from Lovecraft’s study, invisible from the street; and visions in the night of a white-clad girl in the walled garden. Add to this the arrival of a beautiful woman who may not be exactly what she seems, and Crandle is pulled deeper into the strange world of the horror writer (a man known to Crandle only through letters, signed “Ech-Pi”), until Crandle begins to unravel the dark secret at its heart.A brilliantly written, compelling and deeply creepy novel, The Broken Hours is an irresistible literary ghost story.

New York Journal of Books

"The Broken Hours is a lovely homage to the fantastic dreams of the often heartsick writer who inspired it in the first place. "

New York Journal of Books

"The Broken Hours is a lovely homage to the fantastic dreams of the often heartsick writer who inspired it in the first place. "

About the Author

Jacqueline Baker is the author of A Hard Witching and Other Stories, which won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize, and the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction, and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her first novel, The Horseman’s Graves, won wide critical acclaim and was a finalist for the Evergreen Award. Jacqueline resides in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

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