The Lamplighter

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An atmospheric thriller set in nineteenth-century Edinburgh, Anthony O'Neill's elegant, darkly masterful novel is full of psychological suspense and first-rate horror.Evelyn is a clever orphan at the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls. Enchanted by a cheerful lamplighter who fires the streetlamp outside her window each evening, she mesmerizes the other girls with flights of fancy. In a time before Freudian awareness of sexuality and the subconscious mind, such tales are forbidden by the institute's governor, who warns Evelyn to cease her nocturnal storytelling.Evelyn defies him -- and is cast out of the orphanage and sacrificed to a shadowy figure claiming to be her long-lost father. Who is this man, and why does he lock Evelyn away in a hunting lodge?Years later, the mutilated body of a professor of ecclesiastical law turns up on one of Edinburgh's finest streets; the grave of a famous colonel is ravaged; a shady entrepreneur is slaughtered while dashing for a...