Queer Polar Horror Night: The White North Has Thy Bones

As Samhain creeps closer, join us to celebrate a night of queer polar horror with Dorian Ravenscroft and Natasha Pulley!

The book:

Eight years ago, HMS Melpomene met disaster on her search for the missing Franklin polar expedition. A tiny handful of survivors returned home against all odds; now, one of them is to be hanged for the murder of his wife and brother, a crime he claims no memory of committing. Among the spectators is ambitious London newsman, Harry Lambert, obsessed by the Melpomene story and the question of what could drive a hero of the Arctic to such an end.

His search for answers takes him to the door of Sidney Blakely, the survivors’ charismatic leader turned celebrated Spiritualist medium – a power granted to him, he says, in the thin-veiled North. Living with him is Lieutenant Taylor who claims a darker ‘gift’: to be a vessel for possession by spirits of the dead. Harry doesn’t believe a word of it.

But as the true, bloody story behind Melpomene’s end unfolds, he begins to wonder. Blakely’s revelations of desperate mutiny and a hierarchy out of its depth are shocking enough. But between these lines are whispers of unquiet ghosts, and more than ordinarily savage beasts.

In the gaps between what is said and unsaid, what can be believed is as shifting and unstable as the ice itself. Harry knows what Melpomene’s crew left in the Arctic. But what did they bring back?

The authors:

Dorian Ravenscroft (they/he) is a queer Jewish author currently based in London and studying law. Their stories are often deeply rooted in their working-class upbringing, married with their experiences as a queer person growing up in the Northwest of England. Dorian likes to write complicated, nuanced tales featuring complicated, nuanced LGBTQ characters, and has always found their inspiration in horror and history.

Natasha Pulley is the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, and quite a lot more. An international bestseller, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award, the Locus Awards, and remained on the Sunday Times bestseller list for much of summer 2016. The Bedlam Stacks was longlisted for the Walter Scott Award and shortlisted for the Encore Award.

Natasha has lived in Japan as a Daiwa Scholar, as well as China and Peru. She was a 2016 Gladstone Writer in Residence, and she teaches Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, alongside short courses at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. She has also taught various courses for the Arvon Foundation and is always happy to be contacted about other residential teaching too.