Haunting me

by Charity Blackstock

The little village of Blackdown is a self-righteous community, and when Johnny Kilroy returned from the war in America, having lost an arm and fathered a bastard, the respectable Miss Selby, daughter of the late Schoolmaster, broke off her engagement to him without a word. Now she endures the interest of Amos Hewlett, the self-satisfied vicar who is pious in public and drinks in private and who, together with the formidable Mrs. Giles and her unmarried daughter, is waging war on all loose living and eccentricity in the village. His behavior is so arbitrary, and her feelings of revulsion towards him so strong, that Harriet infuriatingly finds herself questioning her own values. What has always seemed right now seems cruel; what has been condemned as immoral begins to seem natural, and Harriet finds herself isolated not only from Johnny and his friends, but now from the rest of the village as well. Her doubts are increased by a sort of curious telepathy with a girl called Nancy who, unbelievably seems to be living in her cottage some two hundred years ahead, in 1976! Nancy has also suffered a disappointment in love, and as the two girls struggle to assimilate each other's worlds, Harriet finds herself increasingly following the promptings of her heart, an action which puts her in the gravest danger...

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Ursula Torday
aka
Paula Allardyce, Charity Blackstock, Lee Blackstock, Charlotte Keepel

Ursula Torday was born on 19 February 1912 (some sources say her birth in 1888 or 1914) in London, England, UK, daughter of mixed parents, her mother was Scottish and her father was Hungarian. She studied at Kensington High School in London, before went to the Oxford University, where she obtained a BA in English at Lady Margaret Hall College, and later a Social Science Certificate at London School of Economics.

In 1930s, she published her first three novels with her real name, Ursula Torday. During the World War II she worked as a probation officer for the Citizen's Advice Bureau, and during the next seven years afterwars, she also running a refugee scheme for Jewish children, inspiration for several of her future novels like, The Briar Patch (aka Young Lucifer) and The Children (aka Wednesday's Children) as Charity Blackstock. She worked as a typist at the National Central Library in London, inspiration for her future novel Dewey Death as Charity Blackstock. She also teaching English to adult students. She returned to publishing in early 1950s, using the pseudonyms of Paula Allardyce, Charity Blackstock (in some cases reedited as Lee Blackstock in USA), to sign her gothic romance and mistery novels, later she also used the pseudonym of Charlotte Keppel. Her novel Miss Fenny (aka The Woman in the Woods) as Charity or Lee Blackstock was nominated for Edgar Award. In 1961, her novel Witches' Sabbath won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association. She passed away in 1997.