The Séance cover art

The Séance

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Séance

By: John Harwood
Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham, Simon Vance, Katherine Kellgren
Try Premium Plus free

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $22.99

Buy Now for $22.99

About this listen

A haunting tale of apparitions, a cursed manor house, and two generations of women determined to discover the truth, by the author of The Ghost Writer.

Sell the Hall unseen; burn it to the ground and plow the earth with salt, if you will; but never live there…

Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for Constance's sister, the child she lost. Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance takes her to a séance; perhaps she will find comfort from beyond the grave. But the meeting has tragic consequences. Constance is left alone, her only legacy a mysterious bequest that will blight her life.

So begins this brilliant and gripping novel, a dark mystery set in late-Victorian England. It is a world of apparitions, of disappearances and unnatural phenomena, of betrayal and blackmail and black-hearted villains - and of murder. Constance's bequest comes in two parts: a house and a mystery. Years before, a family disappeared at Wraxford Hall, a decaying mansion in the English countryside with a sinister reputation. Now the Hall belongs to Constance, and she must descend into the darkness at the heart of the Wraxford mystery to find the truth - even at the cost of her life.

©2009 John Harwood (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Ghosts Historical Horror Mystery Thriller & Suspense Haunted Scary Fiction Heartfelt Paranormal
All stars
Most relevant  
I absolutely loved this, especially the narration of the lady who played the part of Eleanor. The story is incredible, and I cried at the end! Brilliant, brilliant brilliant. I’ve found a new author! He’s incredible.

Fantastic experience

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story kept me listening without a break. The only thing detracting from it was the narrator's habitual mispronunciation of certain words. Saying 'parsage' instead of 'passage' was the most frequent insult on the ear, perhaps from the effort of speaking in an upper class English accent, but there were others. The story itself was brilliant.

Intriguing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I don't know why, but I didn't go into this audio book expecting it to be anything like it was (I had barely read the blurb and couldn't remember much about it by the time I started listening to it). I had been hoping for something with a bit of horror and a bit of supernatural mystery and, while this had elements of that, they were very minute and scarce. At times, this felt more like an Austen or Bronte novel about old-timey England than anything spooky, but it did eventually build elements of mystery in the latter half. Unfortunately, they weren't too thrilling and they culminated in a rather anticlimactic ending. I feel like it could have been better if there were a little more action, but perhaps that would have ruined the style. For what it was, it was well done, both written and performed. There were 4 different narrators, one for each section, and they were all great, albeit the final one had a tenancy to shout a little too much when trying to build suspense and it became rather annoying. My only wish is that there had been more regarding the supernatural elements in the story. For a story called "The Séance", there really wasn't much séances in it in the end!

Not what I was expecting, very old-fashioned.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The continual threat of the mad house as a way the control emotional women was a repeated scenario through generations. I struggled to finish the book. The female narrator was grating, parts of her hysterical high pitched carry on set me to telling her to get a grip and take a bex [ aspirin powder] and have a lay down. The story had enough twists and turns to be interesting.

Sadly not quite my cup of tea.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.