Heather Parry for Carrion Crow

'With Carrion Crow Heather Parry deduces an unutterable Gothic horror of class and gender from the pages of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. A festering Edwardian nightmare dressed in exquisitely tailored language, Parry's vision is magnificent and devastating.' ~ Alan Moore

Heather Parry's debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year award and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. She is also the author of a short story collection, This Is My Body, Given For You, and a short nonfiction book, Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism, and writes the Substack general observations on eggs.

Heather joins us for Carrion Crow, a transportive and gloriously gothic commentary on the constraints of polite society - and the even greater danger of conformity - that unfurls one family's festering secrets.

There are some facts about the world that only your mother can teach you.

So into the attic she had gone, climbing the stairs towards her promised freedom, and she would stay there until she had learned the lessons that would prepare her for the real world, the lessons that only a mother could teach.

Marguerite Perigord had been confined for the sake of her wellbeing.

That's what her mother had said.

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Marguerite has been locked in the attic of her family home, a disintegrating Chelsea house overlooking the stench of the Thames. For company she has: a sewing machine, a copy of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management and trays of congealing food carried up to her with little regularity. Marguerite has been confined by her mother, Cecile, who is concerned about her engagement to an older, near-penniless solicitor, Mr Lewis, and wishes to educate her daughter on 'proper' married conduct - lest she drag the family's good name into disrepute. But why is Marguerite pursuing the aged Mr Lewis in the first place? Why are her mother's visits seemingly becoming less frequent? And just how much time has passed since the lock closed on the attic's hatch?