[Kieran Seymour]

Midnight Sun - Ramsey Campbell

Currently free at Amazon UK.

His limbs had been flung wide as if he’d been trying to embrace the night or had been crushed by it; his eyes had been wide and pale as ice, and he might have been smiling or gritting his teeth.


Ben Stirling is a quiet, young boy with a morbid past.

He has run away from his aunt’s house where he lives in search of the real truth about what happened to his grandfather, and his family...

As he struggles to fit in both at home with his strict aunt and at school with the bullies, he eventually meets the similarly reclusive young boy, Dominic.

In Dominic, Ben finds someone else who is enamoured with the world of books. Together they foster each other’s imaginations and provide the friendship they both need.

In his adult years, Ben inherits the ancestral home. He and his family decide to move in... unaware of the strange stories concerning those who stray too close to the nearby woods at night.

Ben is increasingly drawn to Sterling Forest — extensive pinewoods planted around the ancient oak grove where his great-grandfather was found dead so many years before.

Edward Sterling had previously been exploring the icy wastes of the far north, where shamans were said to practise ancient rituals to keep the midnight sun shining over their desolate land.

Found naked and snowblind in this distant wilderness, he had been returned to his wife... but died soon afterwards.

Now, three generations later, Ben unwittingly sets loose an awesome power, and soon the entire countryside falls into the grip of ice and blizzards.

He is soon ready for what he’d been awaiting his whole life...