Iseult Murphy turns a widow’s grief into a door that opens both ways.
Irish author Iseult Murphy has built a career on grief horror that wears a friendly face, from her zombie sequence 7th Hell to the festive dread of The Thing in Christmas Town. On 7th September, Silver Thistle Press reveals the cover of her new gothic horror novel, Suffer Their Going, ahead of its 21st October release. Set in 1900 Ireland, it follows a young widow who turns to spiritualism to reach her dead husband, and finds a cottage and a coastline with spirits of their own. Here is a look at the book, the author, and the cover reveal that lands next week.
She hands you a shape you think you recognise, a festive town, a fairy tale, a self-help programme, and then she waits for you to notice the teeth. Suffer Their Going hands a grieving widow the oldest comfort of all, a door to her dead husband, and lets her open it.
Gothic Horror Cover Reveal: Iseult Murphy’s Suffer Their Going
A grieving woman is bundled off to a village where it is Christmas every single day, and something is moving behind all that tinsel. That is the premise of Iseult Murphy’s 2024 novella, The Thing in Christmas Town, and it doubles as a fair description of how the Irish writer works. She hands you a shape you think you recognize, a festive town, a fairy tale, a self-help program, and then she waits for you to notice the teeth.
Murphy has been doing this quietly and prolifically for years. She writes out of the east coast of Ireland, has published more than a dozen books, and has placed short fiction in over forty venues, and her range refuses to sit still. There is the zombie sprawl of her 7th Hell sequence, and the IAN Book of the Year finalist 7 Days in Hell. There is All of Me, a body-horror novella about a woman named Margaret and the offer she cannot refuse, which spends less time on the monster than on the mind that would bargain with it.
There is The Mountains of Sorrow, which arrives dressed as a cosy tale about a wood-witch and her squirrels and then declines to stay cosy. Snowmane bends The Snow Queen and Bluebeard into a fairy tale of its own.
Pull a thread through all of it and you keep arriving at two things: grief, and animals. Her survivors are forever the ones left behind, carrying the better part of themselves that has already been lost. And creatures move through her pages with unusual weight, talking, loyal, sometimes the only warm thing left in the room.
Both threads run straight into her new novel, and this is where I get to show my hand, because Suffer Their Going has a cover, and it is about to be seen.
The book arrives on 21st October from Silver Thistle Press, the same house that put out The Thing in Christmas Town, with a cover, by Dark-Designs
The year is 1900. Eleanor Browne has survived a fire that took her husband, her home, and very nearly her reason. After a spell in a sanatorium she can afford nothing grander than a small seaside cottage outside Dublin, one loyal maid for company, and a single unbearable question: how will her dead husband ever find her out here. So she does what a great many real, bereaved people did around the turn of the century. She turns to spiritualism, the new science of the spirit, and sets about prising open a door between the living and the dead.
Anyone who has read a spiritualist ghost story knows how these doors behave once they are open. What makes the setup Murphy’s rather than a period exercise is the cottage itself, which comes with spirits already in residence, and the witch of the dunes, who torments Eleanor with ghostly animals. There they are again. The creatures, turned spectral. The comforting figure with something wrong underneath.
Grief horror can curdle into pure misery in the wrong hands, a wallow with a ghost stapled on. Murphy’s whole record argues against that outcome, because she treats the mask and the monster with equal seriousness and lets a black thread of humour keep the thing breathing.
A widow, a séance, and a coastline that will not stay quiet. Eleanor wants her husband back badly enough to go looking. Whether she should is the whole book.
Release day: 21st October
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/256661183-suffer-their-going
Blurb
A dead husband. A ruined home. A mind in pieces.
A young widow clinging to the remains of her shattered life.
1900, Ireland. A country poised for change.
Eleanor Browne. The sole survivor of the fire that took her husband, her home, and almost her mind. After a stint in a sanatorium, the only home she can afford is a small seaside cottage on the outskirts of Dublin, with a single loyal maid to keep her company.
How will her husband find her so far from the life they lived together in the city? Determined to be reunited with his ghost, Eleanor turns to the new science of the spirit to open a path between the world of the living and the dead.
Morning Star cottage has spirits of its own, and what of the witch of the dunes, who haunts Eleanor with her ghostly animals? As Eleanor’s sufferings increase, her next loss may be her soul.
From the author of “The Thing in Christmas Town” comes a new journey into gothic horror.
About the author
Iseult Murphy is an Irish multi-genre author. Her writing combines dark themes with a dose of humor to entertain and bring a new perspective on the complexities of life. She loves to explore how the most dangerous monsters wear the most pleasing masks. Her experience with chronic illness and mental health issues inspires her stories. She is the author of 7 Days in Hell, which was a finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards. She has published thirteen books, and her short fiction has appeared in over forty publications, including Your Flight Has Been Cancelled from Little Ghost Press, and Aurealis. Find out more about her and her writing at https://iseultmurphy.com/ or https://ko-fi.com/iseultmurphy.
Social links:
https://ko-fi.com/iseultmurphy
https://twitter.com/AuthorIseult
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6472612.Iseult_Murphy
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/iseult-murphy
https://bsky.app/profile/authoriseult.bsky.social
About Silver Thistle Press
Established in November 2023, Silver Thistle Press is an independent publisher of horror, Gothic and supernatural fiction based in the U.K. Focusing primarily on short story anthologies and novellas, our books are perfect for dark nights spent curled up by the fire with a mug of hot chocolate.
Social Links:
https://www.silverthistlepress.com
https://twitter.com/silverthistleps
Newsletter: https://silverthistlepress.substack.com/
Ginger Nuts of Horror: The Heart and Soul of Horror Reviews
Every feature is built to sell your work. We include backlinks to your website or Amazon author page, a full synopsis, and a universal purchasing link that sends readers straight to their local store. Add a large, engaged social following and an 18-year archive of trusted horror coverage, and you have a platform genuinely built to grow your readership.
Whether you’re an established author, an indie filmmaker, or a debut voice in indie horror, there’s a way for us to help you reach more fans. Explore our horror book reviews and horror movie reviews, then get your horror book or film featured today.
