I absolutely love the cover! I thought it captured the mood of the book really well and looked suitably spooky without giving too much away.

The bleak story of Frozen Charlotte originated in a New York Observer article in 1840 that described the frigid death of a real-life young woman somewhere in upstate New York. Over the next few years, some songs and poems helped to further the popularity of the story, and soon it caught fire in America. The story had a clear and easily-understood moral: listen to your mother and don’t be vain. Both Charlotte books hit the nail on the dead, having an excellent balance of fast placed plot, the supernatural, characters you care about, and nasty little dolls ... -- Ginger Nuts of Horror The Island of Skye is such a creepy setting in your story! Why did you choose it and did you have to go visit it for research?I think probably the most challenging thing about writing any horror book is to come up with convincing motivations for the main characters to stay in the haunted location, or make it so that they’re unable to leave. We’ve all seen those horror films where the characters just keep returning to the haunted house for no explicable reason, and that’s always frustrating. A Frozen Charlotte is a specific form of china or bisque doll made in one solid piece without joints from c. 1850 to c. 1920. They were typically inexpensive, and the name Penny doll is also used, in particular for smallest, most affordable versions. The dolls had substantial popularity during the Victorian era. I stumbled across the Frozen Charlotte dolls whilst doing research online one day and the idea for the story basically came from there. I thought they were so deliciously creepy and unusual, as well as not being all that well known, so it seemed like a great starting point for a horror novel. I didn’t know exactly how things were going to play out before I started but I had a rough idea. I prefer not to plan my books in too much detail but I do like to know how the book will end.

I suppose I just think of the things that would most frighten me if I was to experience them! I think that you should always be aiming to scare yourself when writing horror, or else you can’t really hope to scare your readers – which is what we all want from a good horror story! That shivery feeling is why we seek out these types of books and films in the first place. I particularly like subtle, chilling horror, as opposed to big slasher type scenes, because I think this helps create a more insidious atmosphere that can be quite claustrophobic and effective. The inspiration for Sophie’s character really came from a lot of gothic romances I’ve read by writers such as Victoria Holt and Madeleine Brent. These often involve a fairly ordinary heroine finding herself in extraordinary surroundings where she has to deal with strange/fascinating/eccentric characters who most often have various dark secrets. There’s very much a sense of not knowing who to trust and things not being as they seem in this type of book, and I really enjoy that kind of ambiguity as a reader. Penny’s sleepy little farming town hasn’t been the same since it was terrorized by a masked killer who claimed five teenage victims last Halloween. I like the Frozen Charlotte ballad extracts that appear at the start of each chapter. My favourite lines from the poem are: Author Guy Bass introduces SCRAP, about one robot who tried to protect the humans on his planet against an army of robots. Now the humans need his...

Why did you decide to include frozen charlotte dolls in the story? What creepy stuff can you tell us about them?

I devoured this book in one day. It was so much fun... I want to get a crate of Frozen Charlottes, a box of these books and give one to everyone I know at Hallowe'en -- C Smyth NetGalley Learn more about marbles, dominos, dice, toy vehicles, and more found on beaches around the world. Articles › They’re stanzas from the Fair Charlotte poem by Seba Smith. The poem first appeared in 1843 with the title: A Corpse Going To A Ball. This was rumoured to be based on an article about a real life event that appeared in a New York newspaper in 1840, but that hasn’t been substantiated as far as I know. They were popular during the Victorian period and are based on a ballad about a young woman who refuses to wrap up warm for a sleigh ride to a ball and, when they arrive, her fiancé discovers that she’s frozen to death during the journey. The dolls are normally made of white porcelain and have unjointed “frozen” limbs that are intended to portray a corpse. It seemed so typically macabre of the Victorians to create dead dolls for their children to play with! The dolls all come naked, with only painted hair, facial features and shoes. The idea was supposed to be that children would make dresses for them out of any spare fabric their mothers might have lying around.

Night Mayor Franklefink has vanished from the Transylvanian Express - and it's up to you to solve the case! Part of the Solve Your Own Mystery seri... even gorier and scarier than the first novel [...] the harshness of [the historical setting] made this ever more horrific. Wonderful work yet again from Alex Bell! -- Miss Fay Myers NetGalley The winners of The Farshore Reading for Pleasure Teacher Awards 2023, highlighting the work schools are doing to encourage a love of reading, have...

Not one to learn from past experience, Alex started the Legal Practice Course in London. There she met some great people and had a lot of fun messing about during lessons that were clearly meant to be extremely solemn affairs. Thankfully, she dropped out just before the point where all students must submit to the personality-removing process that is a compulsory part of being an esteemed member of the legal profession.I wanted Sophie to be quite normal, in contrast to the other family members, but her courage and determination are the things I most admire about her, as well as her commitment to find out what happened to her friend. You don't need to have read Frozen Charlotte to enjoy this book (though I definitely recommend you read both!) This is a chilling prequel that captures the menace and dread of the first book while giving you an insight of how it all started. This is the perfect eerie read that you'll want to stay up all night to finish. -- Maia and a Little Moore So, while it makes a compelling and delightfully morbid origin story, none of the children who actually played with these dolls knew of a connection between their favorite toy and a foolish young woman’s frostbitten corpse. And even though they’ve lost a bit of their historical creepiness, don’t let that stop you from being excited if you find a porcelain doll on the shore. They’re still strangely beautiful, wonderfully creepy, and rare. Author Luke Palmer introduces his new book, Play (Firefly Press) about four boys growing up together, the challenges, the friendships, and what hap... I obviously did a lot of research about Frozen Charlottes. I also researched other famous haunted dolls, such as Annabelle and Robert. A common theme seemed to be for a child to be given a haunted doll that caused all kinds of problems in the house, which was blamed on the child at first, until the parents came to believe that the doll moved around by itself, or when there was no one home.