The Christmas Guest is a novella by award-winning, best-selling American author, Peter Swanson. Nineteen-year-old American college student, Ashley Smith, studying art in London in 1989, realises she might have upset classmate Emma Chapman by going out with a guy in whom she’d expressed an interest. So when she’s invited to spend a week over Christmas at the Chapman family’s Cotswolds manor in Clevemoor, she’s relieved and a bit excited.

The less-than enthusiastic reception she receives from Emma’s parents is more than offset by Emma’s handsome twin brother, Adam, for whom Ashley finds herself falling almost instantly. One or two things about the house and family make her uneasy, but she faithfully records the whole experience in her diary.

Part two of this skilfully-plotted tale transports the reader to New York City, thirty years later, offering a chilling account of just why Ashley’s diary entries suddenly stop, and the aftermath. Clever and quite dark.