Jenn Ashworth

A present contains a monstrous secret.An uninvited guest haunts a Christmas party.A shadow slips across the floor by firelight.A festive entertainment ends in darkness and screams.Who knows what haunts the night at the dark point of the year? This collection of seasonal chillers looks beneath Christmas cheer to a world of ghosts and horrors, mixing terrifying modern fiction with classic stories by masters of the macabre. From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

'Reading The Parallel Path feels like going on a long walk with an old friend: Jenn Ashworth is exceptionally good company. I loved it' Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'Touching, thoughtful and frank - Jenn Ashworth is a wonderful writer' David Nicholls, author of You Are Here'Whatever Jenn Ashworth turns her hand to, I'm there to read it' Benjamin Myers, author of The Offing'With honesty, humour and determination, Ashworth's journey takes the reader from coast to coast in search of freedom'Jessica Andrews, author of Milk Teeth'A miracle of a book . . . A life exquisitely examined over a long walk across the north of England, from one of our finest human nature writers'Richard Beard, author of Sad Little Men'Stunning - and stunningly intelligent . . . I was very moved and with her every step of the way'Julie Myerson, author of Nonfiction'Full of intelligence and wisdom, searing self-awareness and humour... Jenn Ashworth is an incredibly talented writer'Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father'Beautifully realised and powerful'Catherine Taylor, author of The StirringsBurnt out and longing for an escape, Jenn Ashworth emerged from lockdown with a compulsive need to walk - and to walk away. Armed with little more than the knowledge imparted by a two-day orienteering course and a set of maps, she embarked on the most epic of English walks: Wainwright's Coast to Coast.Guided not just by Wainwright's writing but also by daily letters from her friend Clive - facing an epic journey of his own - Jenn's pilgrimage soon becomes more than just walking: a chance to reconnect and excavate, to re-engage with the act of caring for others and for oneself.But the walk's tricky terrain is not the only thing standing in Jenn's way. As days go by, her balance begins to fail her and the act of putting one foot in front the other becomes a new exercise in caution. When a vicious heatwave forces her to pause her expedition and gives her an opportunity to investigate the new limitations of her body, Jenn is confronted with a life-altering diagnosis - and a new path of self-discovery.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PORTICO PRIZE 2022 'Unnerving, absorbing . . . Laurie is a miraculous creation . . . Piercingly human and darkly funny' Sunday TimesOne ordinary morning, Laurie's husband disappears, leaving behind his phone and wallet. For weeks she tells no one, carrying on her cleaning job at the university, visiting her tricky, dementia-suffering father and holing up in her high-rise flat with a bottle to hand. When she finally reports him as missing, the police are suspicious. What took her so long?Laurie can't fully explain her behaviour even to herself, or the strange presence she senses in the flat. Only when she looks back on the ensuing wreckage does she begin to understand, and see how she might repair the damage.

The genre of creative non-fiction has never been more playful with form, and so this issue of Hinterland celebrates the art of experimentation. Headlining the issue we have an epistolary essay from Jenn Ashworth (Ghosted, Notes Made While Falling) written to her younger self’s favourite author. We also sit down to chat with Doireann Ní Ghríofa about her hybrid work of non-fiction and auto-fiction, A Ghost in the Throat. Also featuring writing by Chris Beckett, Chris Cusack, Pune Dracker, Jacqueline Ellis, Jordan Harrison-Twist, Alice Kent, Laura Knott, Aaron Landsman, Carla Montemayor and Jon Paul Roberts.

A genre-bending meditation on sickness, spirituality, creativity, and the redemptive powers of writing.Notes Made While Falling is both a genre-bending memoir and a cultural study of traumatized and sickened selves in fiction and film. It offers a fresh, visceral, and idiosyncratic perspective on creativity, spirituality, illness, and the limits of fiction itself. At its heart is a story of a disastrously traumatic childbirth, its long aftermath, and the out-of-time roots of both trauma and creativity in an extraordinary childhood. Moving from fairgrounds to Agatha Christie, from literary festivals to neuroscience and the Bible, from Chernobyl to King Lear, Ashworth takes us on a fantastic journey through familiar landscapes transformed through unexpected encounters and comic combinations. The everyday provides the ground for the macabre and the absurd, as the narration twists and stretches time. Hovering on the edge of madness, writing, it seems, might keep us sane--or might just allow us to keep on living. In Notes Made While Falling, Ashworth calls for a redefinition of the creative work of thinking, writing, teaching, and being, and she underlines the necessity of a fearlessly compassionate and empathic attention to vulnerability and fragility.

Original tales by remarkable writersHometown Tales is a series of books pairing exciting new voices with some of the most talented and important writers at work today. Some of the tales are fiction and some are narrative non-fiction - they are all powerful, fascinating and moving, and aim to celebrate regional diversity and explore the meaning of home. In these pages on Lancashire, you'll find two unique tales. 'After the Funeral, the Crawl' is an arresting portrait of a couple forced to confront a dark secret over the course of a pub crawl one night in Preston, by award-winning novelist Jenn Ashworth. 'JUDAS!' is a vivid, coming-of-age story that traces the political and cultural history of Manchester, from its industrial past to its eventual separation from the county, by Benjamin Webster.

'Dark, compelling, beautifully written'Andrew Michael HurleyIn this eerie, atmospheric and mysterious tale, a woman returns to the house in Morecambe Bay where she grew up in the 1960s to find it falling apart, undermined by the roots of two huge sycamores. She is unaware that she has awoken the spirits of her parents, Jack and Nettie Clifford, who watch anxiously as their daughter Annette is overwhelmed by the state of the house and realise too late how far they neglected her as a child. As their memories come alive, the story unfolds of a crucial summer when Annette was 8 and Nettie became too ill to run their boarding house. The lodgers have to go - all except the newly arrived butcher's apprentice, because he seems to have miraculous healing powers and is Jack and Nettie's last, desperate hope. But is he who he says he is? Why do those he lays his hands on feel an erotic charge? And why does he despise his own gift? As everything comes to a head, so too does Annette's story in the present. But this time, someone is looking out for her and comes to her rescue. Finally, the spirits of her parents can let go.

"Extremely intense and powerfully intriguing."--Waterstone's" Ashworth] Evokes a damaged mind with the empathy and confidence of Ruth Rendell."--The Times (London)Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth is a hauntingly beautiful and shocking psychological thriller in the vein of the bestselling novels of Tana French--a darkly compelling story of secrets between two teenage friends in a small English town. Ashworth already has created great buzz in the U.K. thanks to her stunning debut novel, A Kind of Intimacy, winner of the prestigious Betty Trask Award, and now Cold Light places her in elite literary company--alongside Laura Lippman, Kate Atkinson, and other acclaimed masters of intelligent, emotionally powerful mystery and suspense. An unforgettable tale of friendship and memory--and the shattering truth behind a forgotten dead body newly unearthed--Cold Light is a most welcome addition to the crime fiction and thriller ranks.

I'm sitting on my couch, watching the local news. There's Chloe's parents, the mayor, the hangers on, all grouped round the pond for the ceremony. It's ten years since Chloe and Carl drowned, and they've finally chosen a memorial - a stupid summerhouse. The mayor has a spade decked out in pink and white ribbon, and he's started to dig.You can tell from their faces that something has gone wrong. But I'm the one who knows straightaway that the mayor has found a body. And I know who it is.This is the tale of three fourteen-year-old girls and a volatile combination of lies, jealousy and perversion that ends in tragedy. Except the tragedy is even darker and more tangled than their tight-knit community has been persuaded to believe.Blackly funny and with a surreal edge to its portrait of a northern English town, Jenn Ashworth's gripping novel captures the intensity of girls' friendships and the dangers they face in a predatory adult world they think they can handle. And it shows just how far that world is willing to let sentiment get in the way of the truth.

A spine-tingling collection of spooky stories to curl up with on winter nights - the perfect Christmas present for fans of The Haunting Season, The Winter Spirits and M. R. James. This isle is full of noises... From the finfolk of the beaches of Orkney to the plague monsters of the Welsh mountains, and the giant slugs of the Derbyshire peaks to the Beast of Bodmin Moor, Britain is home to many strange creatures of folklore. Some are ancient, as enduring as the forests and mountains they inhabit. Others live among us, in our cities, creating new legends as they scuttle through the shadows. And none of them are to be trusted. In this deliciously chilling collection, award-winning and bestselling authors bring you tales inspired by the monsters that share our land. The perfect read for anyone who's ever spotted something slimy and unexplained in their peripheral vision, or seen eyes reflecting back in the forest where no eyes should be. INCLUDES NEW AND ORIGINAL STORIES FROM: Janice Hallett Abir Mukherjee Rosie Andrews Stuart Turton Dan Jones Jenn Ashworth Sunyi Dean Jane Johnson Rebecca Netley

It's Friday in the Leeke household, but this is no ordinary Friday and the Leekes are a little unusual: they are Lancastrian Mormons, and this evening their son Gary will return from 2 years as a missionary in Salt Lake City.His mother is planning a celebratory dinner - with difficulty, since she's virtually housebound with an undiagnosed, embarrassing condition. What she doesn't realise is that the rest of the family - her meek husband, disturbed oldest son, and teenage daughter - have other plans for the evening, each involving drastic and irrevocable action.As the narrative baton passes from one Leeke to the next, disaster inexorably looms. Except that nothing goes according to plan, and the outcome is as unexpected as it is shocking. Giving a fascinating insight into the Mormon way of life, this blackly funny tale of innocence betrayed shows the havoc religion can wreak.

Annie is obese, lonely and hopeful. Armed with self-help books, her cat and a collection of cow-shaped milk jugs, she moves into her new home and sets about getting to know the neighbours, especially the man next door. She ignores her neighbour's inconvenient girlfriend, but it's not quite as easy for Annie to dismiss her own past. As Annie's murky history of violence, secrets and sexual mishaps catches up with her, she cannot see that she has done anything wrong. She's just doing what any good neighbour would do, after all...