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The Bone Weaver's Orchard by [Sarah Read]

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Sarah Read

The Bone Weaver's Orchard Kindle Edition

by Sarah Read (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

107 ratings

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He's run away home. That's what they say every time one of Charley Winslow's friends vanishes from The Old Cross School for Boys.

It's just a tall tale. That's what they tell Charley when he sees the ragged grey figure stalking the abbey halls at night.

When Charley follows his pet insects to a pool of blood behind a false wall, he could run and let those stones bury their secrets. He could assimilate, focus on his studies, and wait for his father to send for him. Or he could walk the dark tunnels of the school's heart, scour its abandoned passages, and pick at the scab of a family's legacy of madness and murder.

With the help of Sam Forster, the school's gardener, and Matron Grace, the staff nurse, Charley unravels Old Cross' history and exposes a scandal stretching back to when the school was a home with a noble family and a dark secret--a secret that still haunts its halls with scraping steps, twisting its bones into a new generation of nightmares.

Print length

164 pages
Language

English
Publication date

February 1, 2019
File size

1905 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"So well written, so well paced, Sarah Read's The Bone Weaver's Orchard is a thriller with class." --Josh Malerman, author of Bird Box

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07MBWSFMS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ JournalStone - Trepidatio Publishing (February 1, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 1, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1905 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 164 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #775,741 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #20,901 in Horror (Kindle Store)
- #39,096 in Horror Literature & Fiction
- #111,654 in Literature & Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
107 ratings

About the author

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Sarah Read

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Sarah Read writes and reads dark fiction in Colorado. She is Fiction Editor for Pantheon Magazine. When she's not playing with words, she's playing with yarn. Her hands are perpetually covered in ink.

Customer reviews

5 star		50%
4 star		33%
3 star		12%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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K. A. Y.

A fantastic new voice in horror!

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2019

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4.5 stars!

THE BONE WEAVER'S ORCHARD is the first I have read from author Sarah Read, and after this experience, I'll be looking out for everything she releases! The novel takes place at what is then "The Old Cross School for Boys", in North Yorkshire. Although the events are told from the year 1926, I honestly felt that I could be walking through those halls, myself, after only a couple of chapters.

I will admit that I was slightly confused at the inclusion of a Prologue. Normally, I expect this piece to be something of importance to the story that happened--usually--long in the past. However, here it just chronicled the arrival of a new boy to the school, Charley Winslow, whose father was a soldier overseas. The thing was, his arrival was only a couple of days before the other boys, and other than introducing him to the reader, nothing of note occurred.

Aside from that trivial, momentary pause, I felt the rest of the book flowed so steadily--with mounting tension all the while--that I was loathe to put it down at all.

". . . This is not a place for delicate things."

Almost immediately, Read hits the reader with the feeling that something isn't quite right at this boarding school. Between the boarded up wing that hasn't been used in decades, the ghost stories the returning, older boys tell the "first-years", and the strange noises Charlie hears at night, this book has the most perfect atmosphere going for it.

"You saw the ragged man."

The school is set in an old, gothic style mansion, complete with gloomy, wet grounds, and a gardener who is only permitted to sleep in a "shed" outdoors. Not only is the physical atmosphere so prominent, but it also showcases the differences in caste to a very vivid degree.

". . . If you already have a home in your heart, can you make another? . . ."

We have the returning boys, who are at the top of the class hierarchy, the first-years who are expected to work for them in a sort of servitude, and all the ones in between. This gives us a clear view of our main character's situation. In fact, with the everyday routines, common school problems, and the feeling of being sent away from the family you've grown up in, I couldn't help feeling as though I was walking beside Charlie in those unfamiliar stone corridors.

Such a situation is positively perfect for supernatural, ghostly tales!

". . . It's like the dust here is made of memory. You could wander in the past for years."

Given the younger age of our main character, I did wonder if the horror--or at least the gore factor--would be taken down a notch. I am extremely pleased to say that Read did not shy away from ANY of the more graphic displays. Her descriptions of each occurrence, and her writing style in general, stay true to the feeling of the story throughout the entirety of the novel. No details were left out, and each and every horrific find was shown as prominently as they would have appeared to the characters. I can not emphasize enough how powerful these aspects were in keeping my mind completely riveted in the world she created.

". . . No matter how much we belong to a place, it doesn't belong to us . . . "

Overall, I would say that Sarah Read is one of the strongest new voices in horror that I've come across lately. THE BONE WEAVER'S ORCHARD had everything I could have asked for in a novel, and more. There were several intricate threads woven around that even I didn't foresee. Each time I came across something unexpected, I'd stop to think back for a moment, only to realize that the seeds had been so cleverly sewn that I had just failed to recognize their significance in advance.

". . . It's easier to look away . . . if you're not sure of a thing . . . "

With a steady, engaging writing style, and the ability to portray even the most horrifying of images without hesitation, I believe we'll be seeing some great things from this author in the future.

Highly recommended!

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Brilliantly written

Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2020

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People who've read my reviews before have noticed that I tend to be fairly stingy about awarding five-star ratings, even to good books. I tend to reserve that honor for works I consider to be either of great literary importance or near-perfect execution (or both). This is one of those rare titles that easily makes the grade. As soon as I opened it up and got through the first chapter, I could immediately tell why it had won the 2019 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

Indeed, realizing this was the author's debut novel only serves to make an already outstanding work all the more impressive, because it easily holds its own against (and, in fact, surpasses) many of the most acclaimed novels in the genre.

Firmly entrenched within the gothic literary tradition and yet with enough originality to keep the reader's interest from the first page to the last, the book offers a tale of both horror and mystery you won't soon forget. Its various twists and turns never fail to fulfill Aristotle's advice that literary revelations should seem simultaneously surprising and inevitable. The reader questions the motives of all the right characters at all the right times. Perhaps more importantly, though, the setting itself is so expertly rendered in prose as to seem a character in its own right, contrasting the comforts of home with the alienation of a foreign place, the grandeur of an elite institution with the rot of the crumbling British Empire, and the promise for a better future afforded by an educational institution with the haunting sins of the past.

The cast of characters is relatively small--appropriate for a short novel--but realistically rendered. Each character's motivations seem entirely believable and understandable even when the reader is occasionally forced to question their allegiances. Even their dialogue seems well-crafted to be simultaneously appropriate to the book's setting (particularly its temporal setting) and yet completely natural to the modern reader. Occasional use of stylized speech to reflect dialects do sometimes stand out as not entirely effective, but these moments pass so quickly they don't affect the reader's overall experience of the novel.

I can't recommend The Bone Weaver's Orchard highly enough, and I'll be looking forward to reading a lot more from this author in the future.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

n0vel.id3a

Review! 5*

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2020

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⁣I recently finished “The Bone Weaver’s Orchard by Sarah Read. Well I read it y’all .. and I think my heart ran out of my chest. ⁣
⁣
⁣
⁣“𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚗𝚘 𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚍𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜”⁣
⁣
⁣
⁣Every year there’s a runner and this year it just so happens to be the one kid Charley befriends. Charley is already suspicious and unbelieving that his friend would actually leave like that. Then charley see a grey tattered figure in their dorm room late at night and when he tells the others boys they laugh it off as a tall tale. The old cross school for boys has its secrets, stories, and hidden passage ways. Charley won’t stop until he finds the truth. ⁣
⁣
⁣You know when you put off a book for too long and you read it hating yourself for waiting so long. Yep! This was one of those books. In the beginning bits of it reminded me of an old movie I watch when I was a little kid “A little princess”. If you’ve ever seen that movie, you know what I mean when I say “kids are so hurtful and mean”. Also some of the main characters shared similar stories. Anyways off my soap box. This book had me curious, interested, and then I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. I thought this story had a great pace and build up. Also the atmosphere of the school set up was amazing and I loved the feel of it! I can see why this book won the Bram stoker award. 5/5 🌟! Well deserved 👏🏻

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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C. Wallwork

Have you seen the Ragged Man?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2019

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Sarah Read’s debut novel about Charlie, a young boy attending a Yorkshire boarding school in the early 1900s, establishes Read as a writer you need to pay attention to. Weaving together just the right amount of tension and chills to keep you engaged, and the lights on, we find ourselves plunged into a school where ghosts roam the halls, children go missing, and a history more disturbing than someone called the Ragged Man.

While the following comparisons should be taken as merely themes, not facsimiles, the book at times reminded me of the Devil’s Backbone, The Orphanage (only for its feel) and strangely, Harry Potter too. That I’m even drawing these comparisons in a testament to Read’s ability to craft prose that is as atmospheric as it is effortlessly composed. If you like your stories gothic, haunting, and beautifully constructed, then please check out The Bone Weaver’s Orchard. The big question is, what will Read write next? I for one can’t wait to see.

2 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Gripping start to finish

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 8, 2019

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Trust and deception are two of the themes that run though this absorbing horror story that is tense with a terrible gruesome secret at its heart.

The events unfold as seen only through the eyes of a young impressionable of Charley Winslow. Sent away by his father serving with the British army in Egypt, to the safe environment of an English public school in Yorkshire. After an older boy that befriended Charley goes missing from the infirmary, he is told they have run away by those in a position of trust.

Finding out the back story of Sam the gardener, Charley becomes conflicted by the information given out by the Headmaster Byrne and Matron Grace. Unsure he is being told the truth Charley sets off on a dangerous path of exploration of the ruined east wing. Each character is well drawn to naturally move within the hierarchy of the institution. Sam very much at the bottom of the social ladder is the least to be trusted, Byrne on the other hand as headmaster has the power of position, that what he says goes, without question.

In only allowing the us to experience only what Charley sees and hears Sarah Read creates scenes of great tension and drama. This singular point of view makes it very gripping when Charley is under the covers or hiding in a place he should not be. Throughout there are wonderful descriptions of the textures and sounds that go create a sense of unease and danger.

I found the story of Charley very engrossing, and one moved along at a great pace.

David Benjamins

A great book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2019

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Read it. The story is great, the delivery is spot on. Wonderful writer.

Marina Schnierer

A wonderfully atmospheric gothic tale!

Reviewed in Australia on April 2, 2022

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The Bone Weaver's Orchard is a debut novel by Sarah Read and wow, what a brilliant debut novel it is! The story is set in 1926 and centres around a 13 year old boy, Charlie Winslow who is sent away from his home in Cairo by his Father to live and study at the Old Cross School for Boys in North Yorkshire, UK. Charlie isn't like most of the other boys at the school so immediately finds it hard to fit in, preferring to spend hours exploring the grounds for more bugs to add to his collection, instead of attending classes. The old building, once an abbey and home to a generation of earls is abundant with dark tunnels and abandoned passages, which Charlie feels compelled to explore. There's a ragged grey figure which stalks the abbey halls at night, thought to be an old ghost, but when Charlie encounters the figure and boys go missing, he is set on a path which leads him to unravel the Old Cross' history and dark secrets. This story is filled with twists and turns, and keeps you rivetted to each page wanting to find out what happens next. The writing is absolutely beautiful and descriptive. You can feel the chill from the old flagstones and the darkness in the tunnels envelope you, it is so atmospheric. This is a gruesomely dark tale which I highly recommend you check out. It's only 190 pages long but each page is dripping with beautiful, seamless prose, it will keep you glued until the last page. A brilliant debut and well worthy of a 5 star review!

moacir colleoni

ESCOLA DE HORRORES

Reviewed in Brazil on July 11, 2021

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Após a morte de sua mãe, Charley é enviado pelo seu pai, um soldado em outro continente, para um internato na Inglaterra. Chegando lá, logo sofre bullying por parte dos alunos mais velhos, e durante a noite ele ouve e sente a presença de um suposto fantasma que assombra o dormitório. Quando alunos começam a desaparecer de forma misteriosa, inclusive um garoto que se torna seu grande amigo, logo após a sua chegada, Charley começa a suspeitar que algo muito estranhado está acontecendo., e com a ajuda do jardineiro do local, ele começa a investigar. Uma história gótica bem interessante, clima bem ameaçador, internato, local sinistro, um segredo arrepiante, e um personagem cativante. Com ótima escrita, você acompanha as explorações do personagem por tuneis, passagem secretas, e alas desativadas, tudo com muita tensão, em busca da verdade. Todo esse cenário, me lembrou de um excelente filme, The awakening, disponível na plataforma da amazon prime. Leitura rápida e recomendada para quem curte um bom mistério.

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