Mantle snares Celestin's latest novel

Mantle has snared Palace of Shadows, the new novel by Ray Celestin.

Maria Rejt, publisher, acquired UK publishing rights from Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubenstein. It will publish on 12th October 2023. 

Set in the late 19th century, Palace of Shadows sees Samuel Etherstone, a penniless artist in London, contacted by a mysterious heiress, Mrs Chesterfield, and asked to work on a commission for the house she is building on the desolate Smugglers’ Coast of North Yorkshire. The publisher said: "However, staying overnight in the local village pub, Samuel is warned not to spend too much time there. He is told of the fate of the house’s original architect, Francisco Varano; chilling tales of folk driven mad by the house; of it being built on haunted land where young girls have vanished, their ghosts now calling others to their deaths... It is only on arrival at the Chesterfield house that he learns the sinister details of Varano’s disappearance. And yet its owner keeps adding wing upon wing, and no one will tell him the reason behind her chilling obsession . . . But as Samuel delves deeper into the mysteries that swirl about the house, the nature of the project becomes terrifyingly clear."

Rejt said: “I am thrilled to be publishing Ray’s latest novel. Palace of Shadows is an outstanding historical novel, sinister, surprising, hugely atmospheric, perfect for fans of The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail) and Piranesi (Bloomsbury), and which can lay claim to having at its centre the most gothic house of them all.”