A completely varied assortment of books that I have read recently; between a gothic horror, an account of organic dairy farming and a book about forensics and what we can tell from the types of flies found on the deceased, at least it cannot be said that my taste is limited. The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell This antiquated yet chilling novel follows pregnant and widowed Elsie as she travels back to her spouse’s family estate in the 1860s to live with the housekeeper and untrained servants, who hold Elsie and her companion, Sarah, with thinly veiled contempt. Throughout, the novel switches between the present in a mental hospital with Elsie, the violent prisoner who slowly begins telling the story to her new doctor, and between Elsie living at The Bridge, and further, to her husband’s late relatives in the 1630s. It transpires that Rupert’s predecessors, in an attempt to entertain an upcoming Royal visit to The Bridge, purchased optical illusion wooden boards, which b...